Methodology / Framework

What is a SAFe Product Owner?

August 8, 2022/0 Comments/in Methodology / Framework, Posts /by Adam Getz

The SAFe Product Owner is a member of the Agile development team who works as the voice of the customer.

SAFe Product Owner Defined

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) extends the core concepts of traditional Agile systems development and is designed to be used for an entire organization. Additionally, SAFe is the most commonly utilized approach for scaling and common management of Agile implementation practices that are implemented at the organization, enterprise, or portfolio level. SAFe is a body of knowledge that provides guidance on roles and responsibilities, details on planning and managing development programs, and values to uphold during all stages of development.

One of the key roles within SAFe is the product owner (PO). The product owner is a member of an individual development team, is responsible for defining stories, for prioritizing the team backlog of features, and for communications with products from other development teams. Further, the product owner plays a vital role in serving as the voice of the customer, maximizing the value of the solution, and focusing the efforts of the Agile development team. Moreover, the product owner checks and coordinates dependencies across development teams in order best to improve agile release train (ART) development processes while increasing both the development team velocity and the quality of solutions.

While the product owner serves as the voice of the customer to the agile development team, the product owner is not the only one that communicates with the customer and stakeholders. Another key role in SAFe is product management. Moreover product management is the primary interface with the customer and stakeholders within an agile release train. And product management coordinates system and functional requirements among the various product owners within the same agile release train. Typically an agile release train consists of one product manager and four-to-six product owners. Product management focuses on understanding a solution at program level while product owners focus on understanding individual components of a solution.

Responsibilities of a SAFe Product Owner

SAFe product owners are responsible for maintaining and prioritizing features with the development team backlog, conducting iteration planning, decomposing features into stories, determining acceptance criteria for stories, and accepting completion of stories. Additionally product owners coordinate dependencies with other product owners and provide development team status to the product manager of the agile release train (ART). And an agile release train is component of a program that includes multiple development teams working on similar features.

The product owner plays a role that is at the core of SAFe. Subsequently, the product owner is responsible for setting up the product strategy, understanding and communicating customer requirements, and prioritizing the features in the development team backlog. Further, product owners have the responsibility of ensuring customer requirements are satisfied and ensuring value of the developed solution.

The SAFe Product Owner has responsibilities in each of the following SAFe Events:

– Program Increment Planning

A program increment (PI) within SAFe is a timebox during which a development team delivers incremental value in the form of working software and systems. Subsequently a PI typically lasts 8-12 weeks and commonly includes 4-6 iterations. Product owners are heavily involved in program backlog refinement of epics and preparation for each PI planning event. Prior to the PI planning event, the product owner updates the development team backlog, contributes to creating a program vision, and assists with charting out a program roadmap. During the PI planning event, the product owner assist the development team with story definition, provides necessary clarifications for story creation, and provides upcoming PI objectives.

– Iteration Execution

Iterations are the basic building blocks of development within SAFe. Each iteration is a standard, fixed-length timebox, where development teams create incremental value in the form of working software and systems. Within SAFe, multiple time-boxed iterations occur within a program increment, and iterations are commonly one or two weeks in length. Additionally, iteration execution is how development teams manage their work throughout the duration of an iteration.

During iteration execution, the SAFe product owner is responsible for:

• Creating, updating, and maintaining the development team backlog with stories.
• Prioritizing and ordering the stories with in the development team backlog.
• Planning for each iteration.
• Providing development team members clarity and details of stories.
• Reviewing stories for completion.
• Accepting stories as complete per the definition of done.
• Coordinating and syncing with other product owners of other development teams.
• Providing the customer’s perspective to the development team.
• Participating in the development team demonstration and team retrospective.

– Product Owner Sync

Continuously during each program increment, the product owner communicates and synchronizes direction with other product owners assigned to other teams within the same agile release train. Typically the product owners of a agile release train meet once a week for 30 – 60 minutes to check and coordinate dependencies with each other. The purpose of the product owner sync is to get visibility into how well the development teams within an agile release train are progressing toward meeting program increment objectives, to discuss problems or opportunities within the agile release train, to assess any scope adjustments, and determine additional features. The product owner sync event may also be used to prepare for the next program increment, and may include both program backlog refinement and program backlog prioritization.

– Inspection and Adaptation Workshop

The inspect and adapt (I&A) workshop is a significant event is commonly held at the end of each program increment, is used to address any large impediments, and is used to smooth out progress throughout an agile release train. During the workshop, the current state of a solution is demonstrated and evaluated by the members of the agile release train including product owners. Moreover during this workshop, product owners work across development teams to see how best to improve processes, increase development team velocity, and improve solution quality. During the workshop, the product owners conduct system demonstrations for program stakeholders and elicit feedback from the stakeholders. This stakeholder feedback is then used to determine features for the program backlog.

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Overview

December 20, 2020/2 Comments/in Methodology / Framework, Posts /by Adam Getz

The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a model for creating and maintaining repeatable software, product, & service development processes. Moreover, CMMI assists organizations in improving processes, mitigating risks, repeating projects, and encouraging a productive development culture. In a nutshell, CMMI provides a structured view of process improvement across an organization.

CMMI was initially created by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University for use by the U.S. Department of Defense to assess the quality and capability of their software contractors. Since then CMMI models have expanded beyond software engineering to help organizations in any industry build, improve, and measure their development capabilities. Today CMMI is a common requirement for DoD and Federal Government contracts that include any kind of development.

CMMI Maturity Levels

The CMMI model breaks down organizational maturity into five maturity levels which each level providing a description of how well the behaviors, practices, and processes of an organization can enable development to be repeatable and sustainable. According to the SEI, “Predictability, effectiveness, and control of an organization’s software processes are believed to improve as the organization moves up these five levels. While not rigorous, the empirical evidence to date supports this belief”.

A maturity model provides a guideline for the level of effectiveness of the development processes of an organization and can be used as a benchmark for comparison between organizations. The higher the level of maturity, the more effective the organization is. Organizations at Maturity Level 1 are considered ineffective as development processes are undocumented and non-repeatable. While organizations are at either Maturity Levels 4 or 5 are considered highly-effective as they are proactively managing processes with the use the statistical data.

Maturity Level 1: Initial (Ad-hoc Project Management) – Development tasks and projects are conducted on an ad-hoc basis with little or no documentation supporting the development process. Projects are viewed as unpredictable and reactive.

Maturity Level 2: Managed (Basic Project Management) – Development processes are documented sufficiently enough so that repeating the same steps may be attempted. Projects are planned, executed, and managed at this level, but repeatability and sustainability is not yet achieved.

Maturity Level 3: Defined (Process Standardization) – Development processes are defined and established as a standard businesses process with some degree of process improvement occurring over time. At this level, organizations are more proactive than reactive as standards and guidelines exist to provide direction across projects and programs. Organizations understand their shortcomings and how to address theses shortcomings. Moreover, organizations know what their goals are for improvement.

Maturity Level 4: Quantitatively Managed (Quantitative Process Performance and Management) – Development processes are measured and controlled by quantitative data that includes metrics and indicators. The organization utilizes this quantitative data to determine predictable processes. Moreover, the organization uses data to effectively manage risks, make processes more efficient, and correct process deficiencies.

Maturity Level 5: Optimizing (Continuous Process Improvement) – Development processes at this level focus on continually improving process performance through both incremental and innovative technological change. At this highest stage, an organization is in a constant state of improving and enhancing itself by utilizing statistical common causes of process variation.

CMMI Appraisal

The official method used by the CMMI institute to appraise the CMMI maturity level of an organization is called Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI). There are three classes of appraisals, A, B and C, which focus on identifying improvement opportunities and comparing the organization’s processes to best practices. Of these, class A appraisal is the most formal and is the only one that can result in a maturity level rating. Class B appraisal is often used as a test appraisal to provide an idea of where an organization stands and determines areas for improvement. Class C appraisal is typically used as a gap analysis from a previous appraisal.

Appraisal Class A: Provides a benchmark for organizations and is the only level that results in an official rating. It must be performed by an appraisal team that includes a certified lead appraiser.

Appraisal Class B: Less official than Appraisal Class A. Determines a target CMMI maturity level, predicts success for evaluated practices, and give an organization a better idea of where they stand in the maturity process.

Appraisal Class C: This appraisal method is more rapid and more cost-effective than either Appraisal Class A or B. It’s designed to quickly assess an organization’s established practices and how well the practices integrate or align with CMMI practices. It can be used at either a enterprise level or micro level to address organizational issues or smaller process or departmental issues.

Process Areas Associated with CMMI Maturity Levels

Included within each CMMI maturity level are process areas which characterize the maturity level. CMMI defines a process area as, “A cluster of related practices in an area that, when implemented collectively, satisfies a set of goals considered important for making improvement in that area.” Key process areas are organized by common features which address how goals are implemented and describe activities or infrastructure that must be carried out or put in pace.

In order to be appraised at a maturity level, an organization has to successfully implement the process area associated with the maturity level as well as all of the process areas from lower maturity levels.

Process Areas for Maturity Level 1 – Initial (Ad-hoc Project Management)

• No Process Areas

Process Areas for Maturity Level 2 – Managing (Basic Project Management)

• CM – Configuration Management
• MA – Measurement and Analysis
• PPQA – Process and Quality Assurance
• REQM – Requirements Management
• SAM – Supplier Agreement Management
• SD – Service Delivery
• WMC – Work Monitoring and Control
• WP – Work Planning

Process Areas for Maturity Level 3 – Define (Process Standardization)

• CAM – Capacity and Availability Management
• DAR – Decision Analysis and Resolution
• IRP – Incident Resolution and Prevention
• IWM – Integrated Work Managements
• OPD – Organizational Process Definition
• OPF – Organizational Process Focus
• OT – Organizational Training
• RSKM – Risk Management
• SCON – Service Continuity
• SSD – Service System Development
• SST – Service System Transition
• STSM – Strategic Service Management

Process Areas for Maturity Level 4 – Quantitatively Managed (Quantitative Process Performance and Management)

• OPP – Organizational Process Performance
• QWM – Quantitative Work Management

Process Areas for Maturity Level 5 – Optimizing (Continuous Process Improvement)

• CAR – Causal Analysis and Resolution
• OPM – Organizational Performance Management

CI/CD Pipeline with Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

November 25, 2020/0 Comments/in Methodology / Framework, Posts /by Adam Getz

Continuous Exploration, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, & Release on Demand are the Four Major Aspects of SAFe.

The Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Pipeline includes the phases, activities, and automation needed to develop and deploy a new software feature or improvement from analysis to an on-demand release to a production environment for use by a system user. The pipeline is a significant element of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) method for organization-level software development. Moreover, SAFe utilizes a concept known either as agile release train (ART) or solution train (ST). This concept encompasses a team of agile teams collectively responsible for the regular release of features, functionality and improvements. Further, each agile release train independently builds and deploys their own software applications using their own CI/CD pipeline.

The use of a comprehensive CI/CD pipeline provides each agile release train within SAFe with the ability to implement and deploy new or enhanced functionality to users in a more rapid fashion than more conventional software development processes. Conventional practices typically have long implementation cycles, and they tend to deploy large software releases with a great deal of features included. In contrast, the SAFe CI/CD pipeline utilizes short implementation cycles and it enables the deployment of much smaller software releases. Additionally with the SAFe CI/CD pipeline, software modules are developed and deployment of software releases occur as needed. This could be several times a day, several times a week, weekly, or monthly depending on the when the functionality is required to be deployed.

In the previous diagram, the SAFe CI/CD pipeline is shown to be sequential in which the process follows in order of phases (analyze, design, code, build, test, release, deploy). However in reality, the agile release train conducts many of the tasks in parallel. Additionally, analysts, developers, quality assurance personnel, subject matter experts, and operations staff of the agile release train typically all work on tasks at the same time but not necessarily on the same feature. With a shared vision and with team members working concurrently, every agile release train increment and iteration includes: Analysis of requirements, development of functionality, quality assurance, feature demonstrations, deployments to production, and the realization of value.

The SAFe CI/CD Pipeline Includes Four Distinct Aspects:

Continuous Exploration is the process in which user and business needs are identified and features that address those needs are defined. The focus of continuous exploration is to create alignment between what is needed to built and what can be built. During continuous exploration, ideas and concepts are continuously converted into features and specifications of the features are continuously provided. Continuous exploration replaces the conventional waterfall approach of defining all systems requirements at the beginning of the implementation with a more rapid process that generates a consistent flow of features that are ready for the agile release train to implement. Features are defined as small units of work that can travel easily and quickly flow through the remaining aspects of the pipeline. Additionally, within in the continuous exploration process, features are prioritized within the release train backlog.

Continuous Integration is the process of taking features from the release train backlog and building the features into working software modules. Within continuous integration software modules are developed, tested, integrated, and validated in either a pre-production or staging environment where the working software modules are ready for deployment and release. Additionally continuous integration includes a practice in which the merging and testing code of code is automated and code is constantly being integrated into a shared code repository. While automated testing is not required as part of continuous integration, it is typically implied. Continuous integration enables agile release trains to effectively collaborate in the development of different components of a complete software application.

Continuous Deployment is the process of taking completed and validated software modules located in either a pre-production or staging environment and migrating them into a production environment. Once migrated to a production environment, the software modules are verified and monitored to ensure that they are working properly. At this point in the process, software modules become part of the deployed solution and are able to be fully-utilized. This aspect of continuous deployment allows the organization to release, respond, rollback, or fix deployed software modules.

Release on Demand is the ability to make competed software modules and functionality available to system users either all at once or in a incremental/staggered fashion. Subsequently, the business determines the appropriate time to release the completed software modules to groups of system users. New functionality can be released to all system users as soon as it is developed. But more often aspects of each release are provided to groups of system users, timed for when the groups need the new functionality or for when it makes business sense to release new functionality.

SAFe’s Agile Release Train (ART) and Release Train Engineer (RTE)

November 6, 2020/0 Comments/in Methodology / Framework, Posts /by Adam Getz

SAFe’s Agile Release Train is Comprised Multiple Agile Teams Working Together

Agile Release Train (ART)

The SAFEe Agile Release Train (ART) is the primary value delivery construct in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). ART is a long-lived team of Agile teams that are cross-functional across an organization and include all the capabilities needed to define, implement, test, deploy, release, and operate solutions. In a nutshell, ARTs include the teams that define, build, and test features and components, as well as those that deploy, release, and operate the solution. ARTs are organized around the enterprise’s significant value streams and they live solely to realize the promise of that value. Hence, an ART is basically a team of teams responsible for the regular release of features and business benefits. And all the teams within an ART are bound by a common vision, strategy, and program backlog. The ART provides alignment and helps manage risk by providing program level cadence and synchronization. It is based on agreement and adoption of a set of common operating principles and rules which are followed by all teams included within the train.

Release Train Engineer (RTE)

The SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a servant leader within the SAFe framework that serves at the enterprise level, and operates as a full-time chief scrum master. Further, the RTE manages program level processes and execution, facilitates constant improvement, drives continuous development and continuous integration, confirms value delivery, mitigates risks, and resolves impediments at both the strategic and tactical levels. RTE’s are critical to an organization’s Agile framework because they drive ART events and ceremonies as well as help teams deliver value. RTE’s must have extensive knowledge of how to scale Agile practices as well as an understanding of both the unique opportunities and challenges involved in the facilitation and continuous alignment a multi-team development environment.

Release Train Engineers have very similar responsibilities to conventional project managers. They both are responsible for issue, risk, and dependency management, quality assurance, time, people, cost management, and team communications. But they also perform a different type of role. Project managers typically handle scheduling, scope, or change management. Contrarily, RTEs are responsible for program level ceremonies and the release train organization. While the project manager’s role is typically more focused on planning and organizing activities and teams, the RTE’s job in more concerned with mentoring, educating, and improving team member skills, enabling teams to effectively execute, and managing the entire work environment.

What is Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)?

November 5, 2020/0 Comments/in Methodology / Framework, Posts /by Adam Getz

SAFe Enables Agile Systems Development to be Conducted at the Enterprise Level.

About SAFe

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) extends the core concepts of Agile systems development and is designed to be used for an entire organization. While Agile is typically designed as an implementation framework for an individual team, SAFe enables Agile concepts to scale beyond a single team. SAFe is designed for implementing Agile concepts for multiple Agile teams working concurrently. SAFe encompasses concepts from three bodies of knowledge related to systems deployment: agile software development, lean product development, and devops. Moreover, SAFe is the most commonly utilized approach for scaling and common management of Agile implementation practices.

Dean Leffingwell and Drew Jemilo created and released SAFe in 2011 in order to assist organizations to more effectively develop and deploy systems and solutions to better satisfy their client’s changing requirements. Their idea of SAFe has been to enhance the effectiveness of systems development and enable systems development processes to embraced at the enterprise level. Moreover, they designed SAFe to help businesses continually and more efficiently deliver value on a regular and predictable schedule.

SAFe Four Core Values

SAFe encompasses four core values that define the essential ideals and beliefs of this enterprise framework. These core values establish an organizational culture that enables effective utilization of the framework.

Value #1: Alignment – SAFe requires that planning and reflection cadences be put in place at all levels of the organization and for all teams. Cadences are also known as sprints and are consistent two, three, or four week periods in which a set amount of work is planned, conducted, completed, and reviewed.

Value #2: Built-in Quality – SAFe requires teams at all levels to provide a definition of complete or “done” for each unit of work (i.e. task, issue, feature, story, epic, etc.) and to include quality assurance within the development process.

Value #3: Transparency – SAFe enables visibility into all aspects of the development process for all implementation teams including proposed features, priority of features, estimates of tasks, work being performed, work completed, and reviewed features.

Value #4: Program Execution – SAFe requires that both programs and individual teams deliver quality working solutions that have business value on a incremental and regular basis.

SAFe Ten Principles

SAFe is based upon ten fundamental principles that guide behaviors and influence how decisions are made for all implementation teams at all levels of an organization. These underlying principles are not just intended for use by leaders and managers, but for all members of the organization. Further, these principles enable a shift from a traditional waterfall approach for development to the effective use of Agile system development practices.

Principle #1: Take an Economic View – The entire chain of leadership, management, development team members workers must understand the financial impact of the choices they make and everyone should be make decisions based upon both the benefit and cost of the decision.

Principle #2: Apply System Thinking – Systems development must take a holistic approach that incorporates all aspects of the system and its environment into its design, development, deployment, and maintenance.

Principle #3: Assume Variability; Preserve Options – The goal of the process is to manage unknowns and to manage options, providing both the controls and flexibility development teams require to build quality systems.

Principle #4: Build Incrementally with Fast, Integrated Learning Cycles – Development cycles and integration points must be planned with short repeatable cycles in order to enable feedback, learning, synchronization, and coordination among teams.

Principle #5: Base Milestones on Objective Evaluation of Working Systems – Demonstrations of working features provide a better mechanism for making decisions than a requirements document that is only documented on paper.

Principle #6: Visualize and Limit Work-in-Place (WIP), Reduce Batch Sizes, and Manage Queue Lengths – Maintain a constant flow of tasks in the development process by controlling the amount of overlapping work, the complexity of work items, and the total amount of work in-progress at a particular time.

Principle #7: Apply Cadence, Synchronize with Cross-Domain Planning – A regular cadence makes everything in the development process that can be routine be routine and enables team members to focus on system development. Synchronization allows multiple perspectives to be understood, integration issues to be resolved, and features to deployed at the same time.

Principle #8: Unlock the Intrinsic Motivation of Knowledge Workers – Leaders should leverage the mindset of coaching and serving team members rather utilizing command and control techniques.

Principle #9: Decentralize Decision-Making – Tactical decisions are delegated to the individual teams and teams are provided the autonomy they need to make informed decisions on their own.

Principle #10: Organize Around Value – Organizations should create a structure that focuses on both the innovation and growth of new ideas as well as the operation and maintenance of existing solutions.

Kanban Approach In a Nutshell

August 17, 2020/0 Comments/in Methodology / Framework, Posts /by Adam Getz

Lean Approach to Agile Development

The Kanban Approach to software development aims to manage work by balancing the demands with available capacity, and improving the handling of system level bottlenecks. Further goals of the Kanban Aproach are to distribute tasks among a development team to eliminate inefficiency in task assignment as much as possible.

• Visualization of tasks
• Controlling work in progress
• Flow management
• Making policies explicit
• Using feedback loops
• Collaboration

A Kanban Approach is a unique method for performing adaptive and preventive maintenance with an emphasis on continual delivery while not overburdening a development team. The focus of the Kanban Approach is on breaking up and visualizing small pieces of work and limiting the amount of tasks being worked at a particular time, and distributing work load among team members. Additionally, a Kanban Approach is well suited for work where there is no big backlog of features to go through. Rather, the focus is on quickly working through small tasks as the tasks are identified.

The primary tool of a Kanban Approach is the Kanban Board which visually depict units of work or tasks at various stages of a process Units of work or task moved from left to right to show progress and to help coordinate teams performing the work. Kanban Boards are typically divided into horizontal “swimlanes” representing the stages of work including bit not limited to Backlog, To Do, In Progress, Testing, and Done.

A Kanban Board shows how work moves from left to right, each column represents a stage within the value stream. Kanban boards can span many teams, and even whole departments or organizations. The Kanban board is also ideal for managing units of work and tasks for operations and maintenance purposes.

DevOps / DevSecOps – Rapid Application Development

November 26, 2019/0 Comments/in Methodology / Framework, Posts /by Adam Getz

About DevOps

DevOps is a software development paradigm that integrates system operations into the software development process. Moreover, DevOps is the combination of application development, system integration, and system operations. With DevOps development and technical operations personnel collaborate from design through the development process all the way to production support.

Dev is short for development and includes of all the personnel involved in directly developing the software application including programmers, analysts, and testers. Ops is short for operations and includes all personnel directly involved in systems and network operations of any type including systems administrators, database administrators, network engineers, operations and maintenance staff, and release managers.

The primary goal of DevOps to enable enhanced collaboration between development and technical operations personnel. Benefits include more rapid deployment of software applications, enhanced quality of software applications, more effective knowledge transfer, and more effective operational maintenance.

A fundamental practice of DevOps is the delivery of very frequent but small releases of code. These releases are typically more incremental and rapid in nature than the occasional updates performed under traditional release practices. Frequent but small releases reduce risk in overall application deployments. DevOps helps teams address defects very quickly because teams can identify the last release that caused the error. Although the schedule and size of releases will vary, organizations using a DevOps model deploy releases to production environments much more often than organizations using traditional software development practices.

The essential concepts that make DevOps an effective software development approach are collaboration, automated builds, automated tests, automated deployments, & automated monitoring. Moreover, the inclusion of automation into DevOps fosters speed, accuracy, consistency, reliability, and speed of release deployments. Within DevOps, automation is utilized at every phase of the development life cycle starting from triggering of the build, carrying out unit testing, packaging, deploying on to the specified environments, carrying out build verification tests, smoke tests, acceptance test cases and finally deploying on to a production environment. Additionally within DevOps, automation is also included in operations activities, including provisioning servers, configuring servers, configuring networks, configuring firewalls, and monitoring applications within the production environments.

About DevSecOps

DevSecOps is a software development paradigm of integrating security practices into the DevOps process. SecOps is short for security operations and includes the philosophy of completely integrating security into both software development and technical operations as to enable the creation of a “Security as Code” culture throughout the entire IT organization. DevSecOps merges the contrasting goals of rapid speed of delivery and the deployment of highly secure software applications into one streamlined process. Evaluations of the security of code are conducted as software code is being developed. Moreover, security issues are dealt with as they become identified in the early parts of the software development life cycle rather than after a threat or compromise has occurred.

DevSecOps reduces the number of vulnerabilities within deployed software applications and increases the organization’s ability to correct vulnerabilities.

Before the use of DevSecOps, organizations conducted security checks of software applications at the last part of the software development life cycle. By the time performed security checks were performed, the software applications would have already passed through most of the other stages and would have been almost fully developed. So, discovering a security threat at such a late stage meant reworking large amounts of source code, a laborious and time-consuming task. Not surprisingly, patching and hot fixes became the preferred way to resolved security issues in software applications.

DevSecOps demands that security practices be a part of the product development lifecycle and be integrated into each stage of the development life cycle. This more modern development approach enables security issues to be identified and addressed earlier and more cost effectively than is possible with a conventional and more reactive approach. Moreover, DevSecOps engages security at the outset of the development process, empowers developers with effective tools to identify and remediate security findings, and ensures that only secure code is integrated into a product release.

Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Processes

November 3, 2019/0 Comments/in Methodology / Framework, Posts /by Adam Getz

Continuous Integration (CI)

Continuous Integration is a practice utilized by software development teams in which the merging and testing code of code is automated, and code is constantly being integrated into a shared code repository. The merging of code into the shared repository occurs at short intervals and can occur several times within a day. Moreover, each small integration of code is commonly verified by an automated build and by automated tests. While automated testing is not required as part of CI, it is typically implied.

The primary goal of CI is the establishment of a consistent and automated way to build and test custom software applications. Further, CI enables development teams to effectively collaborate in the development of components of a complete software application and can improve the overall quality of the application code. And with CI in place, development teams are more likely to frequently share codes changes rather than waiting for the end of a development cycle. Implementing CI also helps development teams catch bugs early in the development cycle, which makes them easier and less expensive to fix.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

Continuous Delivery is the next step after CI in the software development process in which code changes are automatically migrated to the next infrastructure environment (i.e. Test, Acceptance, Pre-Production, Beta, Production, etc.). Application code is typically developed and integrated together within a development environment. CD then automates the delivery of software applications to another infrastructure environment after the code is successfully built and tested. CD is not limited to one environment and typically includes three to four environments. In addition to the automated migration of software applications to another environment, CD performs any necessary service calls to web servers, application servers, databases, and other services that may need to be restarted or follow other procedures when applications are migrated to that environment.

Whereas CI focuses on the build and the unit testing part of the development cycle for each release, CD focuses on what happens with a compiled change after it is built. In CD, code automatically moves through multiple test, acceptance, and/or pre-production environments to test for errors and inconsistencies as well as to prepare the code for a release to a production environment. Within the CD process, tests are automated and software packages rapidly deployed with minimal human intervention.

Between CI and CD Processes

The transition between the CI and CD processes is both seamless and rapid. As the CI process ends, the CD process immediately starts. And when the CD process end, the CI process starts again. After software builds are successfully tested within the CI process, an approval kicks off the subsequent related CD process. Further, approvals can be either automatically executed with the success of all automated unit tests or manually executed with a human agreeing that all unit tests are successful. Then upon completion of the CD process, planning immediately starts for the next iteration of the CI process Typically planning focuses on the scope and tasks involved with the development of the next software component.

Complete CI/CD Process

The Complete Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Process is a way of developing software which code is constantly being both developed and deployed. Updates to software modules can occur at any time and occur in a sustainable way. CI/CD enables organizations to develop software quickly and efficiently with a seamless gap between development and operations. Moreover, CI/CD leverages a complete process for continuously delivering code into production, and ensuring an ongoing flow of new features and bug fixes. Many development teams find that the CI/CD approach leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allows a team to develop quality software in a rapid fashion. The approach is also flexible enough to let code releases occur on a schedule (i.e. weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.). Both rapid release of code and scheduled release of code can occur within a complete CI/CD process.