Continuous Delivery: What and How?
- 1.1 Introduction: What Is Continuous Delivery?
- 1.2 Why Software Releases are So Complicated
- 1.3 Values of Continuous Delivery
- 1.4 Benefits of Continuous Delivery
- 1.5 Generations and Structure of a Continuous Delivery Pipeline
- 1.6 Conclusion
Software architect Eberhard Wolfe introduces the term Continuous Delivery and explains which problems Continuous Delivery solves and how. A first introduction into the Continuous Delivery pipeline is also given.
1.1 Introduction: What Is Continuous Delivery?
This question is not so easy to answer. The inventors of the term do not provide a real definition.1 Martin Fowler focuses in his discussion2 of Continuous Delivery on the fact that software can be brought into production at any time. This requires an automation of the processes necessary for the installation of software and feedback about software quality. Wikipedia3 on the other hand defines Continuous Delivery as an optimization and automation of the software release process.
In the end, the main objective of Continuous Delivery is to analyze and optimize the process leading up to the release of software. Exactly speaking this process is often blended out during development.