Dave Farley is a consultant and renowned thought leader in the software development world, and a strong advocate for ensuring that our software is always releasable. He's co-authored a book and runs a popular YouTube channel, both called "Continuous Delivery". We spoke about what continuous delivery is, why it's important, the barriers to implementing it, and how product managers can help.
Episode highlights: 1. Continuous delivery is what the best software organisations in the world doIt's unambiguous. It's backed by data. It's the best way to build quality products. Applying these techniques means your software is always releasable, and every change is safe
2. But, this doesn't mean you need genius developersAny team can adopt continuous delivery. It's not a factor of 10x "rock star" developers, but empowered teams of developers working together, collaborating and *talking* to each other.
3. You build quality software by going fastContinuous feedback based on small changes, constantly validated, ensures high-quality products. You don't want to go back & fix it later. You can't inspect quality into a system at the end of a development cycle. Build it in upfront.
4. Just because you can release continuously doesn't mean you have toWhat you release to customers is a business decision. This isn't about throwing half-finished features at users but having software that you know works. You can use feature flags to manage availability.
5. Many product managers need to check themselvesWe need to move away from PMs giving developers human-language representations of code and telling them to convert it for a computer. The best devs are problem solvers and should be involved in working out the best solution.
Buy "Continuous Delivery""Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process.This groundbreaking new book sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers, and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours―sometimes even minutes–no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base."
Check it out on Amazon.
Check out Dave's courseDave has a course out that helps people get good at all the stuff we talked about in the podcast. If you're interested, check the course out here.
Dave also mentioned a talk by his co-author Jez Humble. I'm not 100% sure if this is the one, but it looks pretty good anyway. Check it out.
Contact DaveYou can connect with Dave on Twitter. You can also check out the Continuous Delivery YouTube channel.
Debbie Levitt's Hot Take - Democratising our Work means AI is Going to Steal all our Jobs Sooner (with Debbie Levitt, CXO @ DeltaCX and Author "Customers Know You Suck")
Build Better Products at Scale with Product Operations (with Melissa Perri & Denise Tilles, Product Consultants & Co-authors "Product Operations")
Knowing your Customers, Seeking Evidence and Sticking up for Continuous Discovery (with Hope Gurion, Product Leader and Team Coach @ Fearless Product)
Transforming your Organisation to the Product Operating Model (with Marty Cagan, Author "Inspired", "Empowered" and "Transformed")
Applying Product Management Principles to Life (with Miloš Belčević, Author "Build Your Way")
Standing up for User Research... and User Researchers (with Debbie Levitt, CXO @ DeltaCX and Author "Customers Know You Suck")
Building Great Companies through Community-Led Growth (with Lloyed Lobo, Author "From Grassroots to Greatness")
Harnessing Generative AI to Reimagine the Future of Product Management (with Shyvee Shi, Product Lead @ LinkedIn & Author "Reimagined: Building Products with Generative AI")
Enabling Strategic Product Decisions through Product Operations and Portfolio Management (with Becky Flint, CEO of Dragonboat)
Nailing your Brand Marketing by Embracing your Zone of Genius (with Orly Zeewy, Brand Strategy Consultant & Author ”Ready, Launch, Brand”)
Making Sure You Make an Impact through User Research (with Steve Portigal, User Research Consultant & Author ”Interviewing Users”)
Helping Superhero Startup Founders Stay Away from their Kryptonite (with Richard Blundell, Founder @ Vencha & Co-author ”The Go To Market Handbook for B2B SaaS Leaders”)
Making our Product Teams Stronger through Building Communities of Practice (with Petra Wille, Author ”Strong Product People” and ”Strong Product Communities”)
Going Beyond the Dreaded Product Demo and Creating the Perfect Sales Pitch (with April Dunford, Author ”Obviously Awesome” and ”Sales Pitch”)
Nailing your Product/Market Fit Strategy by Focusing on the Mission Critical (with Maja Voje, Growth Strategy Expert & Author ”Go-To-Market Strategist”)
Fearlessly Defeating the Four Horsemen of a Product-Friendly Culture (with Eisha Armstrong, Co-founder @ Vecteris & Author ”Productize” & ”Fearless”)
How to Build Products when the Founder IS the Product (with Saagar Bains, Fractional Product Leader & Former Head of Product @ The Body Coach)
Supporting the Next Generation of Female Product Managers with Women in Product UK (with Namrata Sarmah, Founder @ Women in Product UK & CPO @ INTO)
Paying Off Your Organisation’s Human Debt Through Agility & Psychological Safety (with Duena Blomstrom, Founder & CEO @ People Not Tech)
Moving Beyond Founder-Led Product Development & Setting PMs up for Success (with Jennifer Yang-Wong, VP of Product @ Contrary)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
Aligned Money Show
Gorse Culture PODcast : The H.R. Detective Agency!
HCI Leadership Revolution
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money