Downward spiral: 1
Downward spiral:
1. Releases often fail because the team doesn’t have automated tests and deployments, weak code reviews, poor communication, and often fails to integrate successfully.
2. This scares the business into requiring infrequent releases with outside “approval boards” to “ensure stability”.
3. This creates big, risky releases that must be carefully coordinated and negotiated.
4. Big releases mean more batching, more WIP, longer cycle times. and more release coordination overhead. Plus, prod bugs are hard to resolve because so much changed and releases require special business approval just to fix the bug.
The solution? See next tweet…
Virtuous cycle:
1. The team consistently writes automated tests. The deployment is automated. Code reviews are robust. People communicate and pair as needed.
2. The team is trusted to deploy whenever they want.
3. Deploys are frequent, consistent, automated, and low drama.
4. This creates small, low risk, low overhead releases. Small releases mean low batching, low WIP, short cycle times, and low release coordination overhead. Plus, prod bugs are easy to resolve because little changed and a deploy is quick and easy.