Climbing the "Stairway to Heaven" A multiple-case study exploring barriers in the transition from agile development towards continuous deployment of software
Paper in proceeding, 2012

Agile software development is well-known for its focus on close customer collaboration and customer feedback. In emphasizing flexibility, efficiency and speed, agile practices have lead to a paradigm shift in how software is developed. However, while agile practices have succeeded in involving the customer in the development cycle, there is an urgent need to learn from customer usage of software also after delivering and deployment of the software product. The concept of continuous deployment, i.e. the ability to deliver software functionality frequently to customers and subsequently, the ability to continuously learn from real-time customer usage of software, has become attractive to companies realizing the potential in having even shorter feedback loops. However, the transition towards continuous deployment involves a number of barriers. This paper presents a multiple-case study in which we explore barriers associated with the transition towards continuous deployment. Based on interviews at four different software development companies we present key barriers in this transition as well as actions that need to be taken to address these.

agile software development

continuous deployment

business

continuous integration

customer collaboration

Author

Helena Holmström Olsson

University of Gothenburg

Hiva Alahyari

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Software Engineering (Chalmers)

Jan Bosch

Software Center

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Software Engineering (Chalmers)

2012 38th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications

1089-6503 (ISSN)

392-399
978-0-7695-4790-9 (ISBN)

Subject Categories

Computer and Information Science

DOI

10.1109/SEAA.2012.54

ISBN

978-0-7695-4790-9

More information

Created

10/8/2017