Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler))
Winner of the 2011 Jolt Excellence Award!
Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process.
This groundbreaking new book sets out the principles and technical practices that enable
rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through
automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between
developers, testers, and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours—
sometimes even minutes–no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base.
Jez Humble and David Farley begin by presenting the foundations of a rapid, reliable, low-risk
delivery process. Next, they introduce the “deployment pipeline,” an automated process for
managing all changes, from check-in to release. Finally, they discuss the “ecosystem” needed to
support continuous delivery, from infrastructure, data and configuration management to governance.
The authors introduce state-of-the-art techniques, including automated infrastructure management
and data migration, and the use of virtualization. For each, they review key issues, identify best
practices, and demonstrate how to mitigate risks. Coverage includes
• Automating all facets of building, integrating, testing, and deploying software
• Implementing deployment pipelines at team and organizational levels
• Improving collaboration between developers, testers, and operations
• Developing features incrementally on large and distributed teams
• Implementing an effective configuration management strategy
• Automating acceptance testing, from analysis to implementation
• Testing capacity and other non-functional requirements
• Implementing continuous deployment and zero-downtime releases
• Managing infrastructure, data, components and dependencies
• Navigating risk management, compliance, and auditing
Whether you’re a developer, systems administrator, tester, or manager, this book will help your
organization move from idea to release faster than ever—so you can deliver value to your business
rapidly and reliably.
From the Publisher
From the foreword by Martin Fowler
“Getting [Continuous Integration] working takes effort, but benefits are profound. Long, high-intensity releases become a thing of the past. Customers of software see ideas rapidly turn into working code that they can use every day. Perhaps most importantly, we remove one of the biggest sources of baleful stress in software development. Nobody likes those tense weekends trying to get a system upgrade released before Monday dawns.
It seems to me that a book that can show you how to deliver your software frequently and without the usual stresses is a no-brainer to read. For your team’s sake, I hope you agree.”