This document discusses evolving software delivery pipelines. It begins with introductions of the authors and XebiaLabs. The agenda then covers continuous delivery, goals for CD initiatives, determining the scope of a CD pipeline, ownership of CD initiatives, top-down vs bottom-up implementation approaches, CD tooling, and takes questions. Key points emphasized include setting measurable goals, defining the scope and stages of the pipeline, determining cross-functional ownership, and selecting appropriate tooling to realize the pipeline.

1. Evolving
your
Software
Delivery
Pipeline
David Rubinstein, Editor, SD Times
Andrew Phillips, VP Products, XebiaLabs
27 May 2014

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2014.
About
David
▪ David Rubinstein is the editor-in-chief of SD Times and
SharePoint Tech Report, and conference chairman of
SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference.
▪ An award-winning journalist, David has more than
30 years experience in news reporting and editing
▪ A founding member of the SD Times team, David has
spent the last 10 years in the high-tech industry.

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2014.
About
Andrew
▪ VP Products for XebiaLabs
▪ Lots of enterprise software development on high-performance
systems
▪ Been on both sides of the “Dev…Ops” fence
▪ Active open source contributor and committer:
jclouds, Akka, Gradle and others
▪ Cloud, PaaS & JVM language fan (mainly Scala, Clojure)
▪ Regular meetup, conference etc. presenter

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2014.
About
XebiaLabs
Success stories
▪ Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts
▪ Global development and support offices in US,
NL, UK, France and India
Automate & Accelerate Application Delivery
XL Platform combines:
− Deployment Automation
− Enterprise Release Management for DevOps &
Continuous Delivery
− Agile Test Management
− Environment Provisioning
… for the faster delivery of higher quality
software
And many more…

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2014.
Agenda
▪ Continuous Delivery in 3min
▪ Goals for CD Initiatives
▪ Determining the Scope of your CD Pipeline
▪ Who Owns the CD Initiative and Pipeline?
▪ Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Implementation
▪ Continuous Delivery Tooling
▪ Q & A

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2014.
Continuous
Delivery
in
3min
“Continuous delivery is a set of patterns and best practices that can
help software teams dramatically improve the pace and quality of
their software delivery.”

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2014.
Continuous
Delivery
in
3min
▪ Competitive pressure
▪ Hot trend
− More than 50% of survey respondents
say this is a 2014 initiative
− Increasingly, executive-level topic
▪ Clear business values
− Accelerate time to market
− Increase application quality
− Increase customer responsiveness

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2014.
Continuous
Delivery
&
Agile
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early
and continuous delivery of valuable software.”

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2014.
Continuous
Delivery
&
Agile
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early
and continuous delivery of valuable software.”
Principle #1 from the Agile Manifesto

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2014.
Continuous
Delivery
&
Agile
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early
and continuous delivery of valuable software.”
Principle #1 from the Agile Manifesto
“Really Doing Agile” ► Continuous Delivery

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2014.
From
Hype
to
Reality
▪ “Yes, yes, I get it…I want to start implementing Continuous Delivery. So what do
I do now??”
▪ Very confusing space for organizations at present
▪ Long on inspiring stories and case studies, short on clear, practical steps of how
to actually get started

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2014.
From
Hype
to
Reality
▪ “Yes, yes, I get it…I want to start implementing Continuous Delivery. So what do
I do now??”
▪ Very confusing space for organizations at present
▪ Long on inspiring stories and case studies, short on clear, practical steps of how
to actually get started
▪ Aim for today: discuss some key topics that will help you define a more
concrete plan for your initiative

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2014.
Goals
for
CD
Initiatives
▪ “I want to build a delivery pipeline” or “I want to accelerate my time-to-market”
are easy statements to make…but what do they actually mean? What are the
measurable benefits they provide?
▪ Critical first step: defining SMART goals for your CD initiative
▪ Goals will depend on your business context!

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2014.
Goals
for
CD
Initiatives
▪ “I want to build a delivery pipeline” or “I want to accelerate my time-to-market”
are easy statements to make…but what do they actually mean? What are the
measurable benefits they provide?
▪ Critical first step: defining SMART goals for your CD initiative
▪ Goals will depend on your business context!
▪ “I want every commit to be able to go to production within 20min”
▪ “I want the release process for every application to be fully automated”
▪ “I want to be able to release each feature or fix to production individually”
▪ “I want the entire team to see all the steps still needed for a feature to go live”
▪ “The maximum idle/handover time throughout the entire release process should
be less than 1h”

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2014.
Determining
the
Scope
of
your
CD
Pipeline
▪ The CD Pipeline is the primary component of a Continuous Delivery initiative
▪ Moves each feature or change through the stages of your release process

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2014.
Determining
the
Scope
of
your
CD
Pipeline
▪ The CD Pipeline is the primary component of a Continuous Delivery initiative
▪ Moves each feature or change through the stages of your release process
▪ “I want my pipeline to be automatically triggered for each commit”
▪ “I want my pipeline to be automatically triggered once a day”
▪ “I want my pipeline to be manually triggered at the end of each sprint, if we
decide the code is good enough”
▪ “I want my pipeline to push the code to the QA environment”
▪ “I want my pipeline to push the code to production”

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2014.
Who
Owns
the
CD
Initiative
and
Pipeline?
▪ The CD pipeline will be realized through one or more tools that need to be
installed and maintained
▪ The stages of the pipeline will cover the responsibilities of multiple groups within
the organization: Dev, QA, Release, Ops, DBAs and more
▪ Implementing CD may require changes to your organization’s processes

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2014.
Who
Owns
the
CD
Initiative
and
Pipeline?
▪ The CD pipeline will be realized through one or more tools that need to be
installed and maintained
▪ The stages of the pipeline will cover the responsibilities of multiple groups within
the organization: Dev, QA, Release, Ops, DBAs and more
▪ Implementing CD may require changes to your organization’s processes
▪ “I want the CD initiative to be owned by the development organization”
▪ “I want the CD initiative to be owned by Release Management”
▪ “I want the CD initiative to be owned by Operations”
▪ “I want to create a new group to own the CD initiative”
▪ “I want to create a cross-functional (DevOps) team to own the CD initiative”

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2014.
Top-­‐Down
vs.
Bottom-­‐Up
Implementation
▪ Continuous Delivery is attracting more and more C-level attention these days
▪ Practical efforts and experience still largely within the development organization
as an extension of Continuous Integration
▪ For “real” Continuous Delivery, need to get the business on board

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2014.
Top-­‐Down
vs.
Bottom-­‐Up
Implementation
▪ Continuous Delivery is attracting more and more C-level attention these days
▪ Practical efforts and experience still largely within the development organization
as an extension of Continuous Integration
▪ For “real” Continuous Delivery, need to get the business on board
▪ “I want to start Continuous Delivery as an organization-wide mandate”
▪ “I want to start Continuous Delivery as a top-down initiative via pilot projects”
▪ “I want to let Continuous Delivery grow bottom-up as individual project teams
find they need it”
▪ “I want to let Continuous Delivery kick off with some of the business units who
are more open to ongoing interaction”

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2014.
Continuous
Delivery
Tooling
▪ The concept of a CD pipeline is clear enough, but how do I actually realize it?
▪ Can I use existing tooling for the pipeline, or do I need to investigate new tools?
▪ What supporting services and infrastructure do I need for my pipeline?

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2014.
Continuous
Delivery
Tooling
▪ The concept of a CD pipeline is clear enough, but how do I actually realize it?
▪ Can I use existing tooling for the pipeline, or do I need to investigate new tools?
▪ What supporting services and infrastructure do I need for my pipeline?
▪ “Can I build my pipeline using my Continuous Integration tool, or should I have a
look at a pure-play Pipeline Orchestrator?”
▪ “How do I combine my pipeline tooling with existing ALM and Release
Management systems?”
▪ “How do I provide a scalable basis for my pipeline, including on-demand testing
environments?”
▪ “How do I integrate my testing practice and test tools into the pipeline?”
▪ “How do I provide visibility into the status of each feature in the pipeline?”

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2014.
Q
&
A
▪ Over to you!
▪ Input your questions in the control panel now.

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2014.
Next
Steps
▪ Questions? Andrew Phillips, aphillips@xebialabs.com
▪ Get started accelerating your software delivery!
http://go.xebialabs.com/Try-XL-Platform
▪ Learn more about XL Platform:
http://www.xebialabs.com/products/xl-platform/
▪ More Information
Products: www.xebialabs.com/products
Blog: blog.xebialabs.com
Twitter: @xebialabs
Videos: vimeo.com/xebialabs

25. Thank
You!