Automation, iterations, feedback, and continuous improvement. These are three expressions that define continuous delivery as a software development practice that became crucial to increasing the quality of the digital products launched to the market.

With continuous delivery, the changes in the code and its delivery are faster than usual, given that it encourages smaller iterations and accelerated feedback cycles.

In this article, we’ll explore the key principles of continuous delivery, the way it improves software quality, its relationship with software testing and the common misconceptions around this development practice.

 

What is continuous delivery?

 

Making changes in developing software might not be as easy and fast as needed. With continuous delivery (alongside continuous integration), this process becomes simpler and faster to deploy.

For continuous delivery to have that effect on the development process, it strictly depends on automation, accelerated feedback, and predictable deployments. And, with these features, developers manage to change almost anything in software, from configuration changes or bug fixes in a secure environment.

The automation practice, for instance, helps make code changes and testing faster, deployments get less risky and daily improvements are made with better performance.

The continuous delivery practice is often extended to continuous integration, in which the code is deployed to a safe testing environment and enables developers to always have an artifact ready to go through testing.

 

Key principles of continuous delivery

For development teams to make effective use of continuous delivery, they should be aware of and integrate several key principles:

• Build the software with quality across the whole process.
• Change features in small and incremental batches to allow faster feedback cycles.
• Automate all tasks possible, including tests, deployment, and release.
• Pursue a better performance continuously.
• Share responsibility with all team members to foster a collaborative culture.
• Repeat the same process for every product and make sure the deployment process is reliable.
• Address issues from the start to minimize the impact of vulnerabilities.
• Include a database in the development process for changes to be managed effectively.

 

Continuous delivery and software development

 

Continuous delivery is a strategy that improves the software’s overall quality. Besides all the benefits it brings to the development teams, it can accelerate the process and help mitigate vulnerabilities through automated tests and shorter feedback cycles.

How does continuous delivery improve software quality?

This practice is one of the strategies IT companies are using to add value to their software. This is how this tactic can improve software quality:

• Detection and fixing bugs as soon as possible, so that it’s not released with vulnerabilities and malfunctions.
• Avoid the introduction of new bugs anytime changes are made, especially through regular testing in every batch of the developed software.
• Assurance of stability and security due to the short and immediate feedback cycles.
• Improvement of the developer’s overall productivity, given that automates tasks that used to be done manually. With this, continuous delivery frees up developers, allowing them to focus on the logic of the code they are writing.

 

With these four key points, continuous delivery can help teams develop software with fewer errors and vulnerabilities, as well as release it faster to the market, among many other benefits.

The benefits of continuous delivery in software development

As we’ve stated before, this practice can add value to software as it is being developed and not only as it is finished and about to be released.

The continuous delivery workflow is, however, beneficial to both product and development teams. Benefits of this practice include:

• Increased productivity and sustainability, as it accelerates the code changes necessary.
• Reduced manual effort and smooth workflows, with more iterations and efficient releases.
• Higher code quality, as it allows for discovering bugs in the early stages and fixing them as they are discovered.
• Increased security, with the software being released with less (or even without) vulnerabilities.
• Faster adaptation to market changes and delivery of updates to users.

 

In this sense, companies release valuable digital products, which means that they are also building a better brand reputation and trustful products.

 

Continuous delivery and software testing

 

As a strategy for faster and higher-quality software development, continuous delivery is intrinsically connected with software testing, especially automated tests.

If, in previous years, development and testing were distinct parts of the process, now they are integrated parts and testing is made in each step of the product development. Every time a part of the software is developed, it is tested and then deployed. These two parts of the process happen simultaneously.

For these two phases to co-exist, most of the tasks must be automated. And, as part of the continuous delivery practice, tests are usually automated. This allows for more consistent and accurate tests, that may find bugs and vulnerabilities easier and faster than if they were executed manually.

The results of a test lead to feedback and, as stated before, continuous delivery encourages constant and faster feedback cycles, enabling teams to solve issues as they come up.

As testing becomes integrated into the whole software development, both teams must collaborate to maintain the effectiveness of the production process.

 

Conclusion

 

Continuous delivery is a regular and current practice in IT companies. Because it accelerates the pace at which the digital product is developed while maintaining the high quality of the code, this strategy became crucial for teams that work under the Agile methodology.

This practice is a way to add value to software, given that it improves the speed of deployment, the productivity of the developers, and feedback cycles, as well as bug detection and fixing.

As continuous delivery enables all these, it ends up improving the quality of the software itself and promoting collaboration among teammates.