15 teams, 1 shared monolith, 1 release every 6 months, and product demand for 1 release every 2 weeks. How do you know where to start with Continuous Delivery, when you’re surrounded by technology and organisational challenges?
This is the journey of 15 teams and their 1 shared monolith, at a federal Belgian agency. They increased their throughput from bi-annual releases to fortnightly releases in under 4 months, achieving a state of Continuous Delivery.
The cost and time for testing quality into the software product, stabilising and releasing the product during each bi-annual release were skyrocketing. The demand for Continuous Delivery was there, but the circumstances made it very difficult.
I’ll cover how we used the Improvement Kata, Value Stream Mapping, and the Theory Of Constraints to choose which changes to apply first, and kickstart the organisational changes we needed to improve quality and drive down lead times.
If you thought Continuous Delivery was just for the happy few having trendy microservices, think again!
Learning outcomes - you will be able to:
- Understand how the Improvement Kata is a better approach to introduce change at scale.
- Apply the Improvement Kata to introduce change.
- Analyse the organisation’s current situation using a Value Stream Mapping workshop.
- Identify the bottlenecks requiring first attention using the Theory of Constraints.
- Apply Fear Conversations to surface stakeholders’ fears and mitigate them.
References:
- Lean Enterprise (ch 6 Deploy Continuous Improvement), Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, Barry O’Reilly
- Supplemental chapter to Accelerate: How to transform, Jez Humble
- The Improvement Kata, Mike Rother
- Measuring Continuous Delivery, Steve Smith
- The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt
- A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware, Gary Gruver, Mike Young, Pat Fulghum
- Dual Value Streams, Steve Smith
- Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast, Tom Wujec, TEDGlobal 2013
- Agile Conversations, Jeffrey Fredericks and Douglas Squirrel