Patterns for Efficient Build Promotion

About this Presentation

We have seen quite a few larger projects for which a naive practice of early integration between the components lead to constant breakages. Thus they were not capable to successfully build a new version of the software stack for days or even weeks. Obviously the problem of that is dramatic as no regular manual testing and capacity testing is taking place. Not only is this a massive waste of testing resources, it also leads to very long and therefore expensive feedback cycles that severely affect your time-to-market of new features. It also a likely source of conflict between the CI team and software development, as with no other means at hand, there is a desire to create stability by not adding new features or doing important refactoring.

We will present patterns on how to integrate as early as possible but at the same time keep the delivery pipeline of new features flowing. Obviously automation can't solve all the problems of software development. But it can for example help to shield against pockets of problematic pieces of software. With a good reporting it can also give valuable insights into potential organizational problems.