A good podcast to get a no-BS opinion on Agile, DevOps and CI/CD is the Non-Nonsense Podcast.
Recently, Brian Finster talked to Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson about DevOps, CD and SAFe.
Really interesting conversation, not least because I’m a little sceptical about the dogmatic rolling out of CD across organisations – and Brian mentions quite a few names where this has been embraced including Walmart, Capital One, Verizon, John Deere among others. He also introduces the concept of a CD Dojo which, to me, just brings to mind Karate Kid and some kind of ritualistic organisational preaching of repeatability and accordance with principle. That said, what you get in the discussion is actually a lot more nuanced than that. Some great quotes from Brian:
“Engineer for release” – I like this one. Basically, build your pipelines before you’ve started coding. This is something I heard echoed in Anne Jan Brouwer‘s talk at DevOps Days Eindhoven a couple of weeks ago.
As management “Don’t send the path down CD and get cold feet”.
On SAFe and Release Trains: “How Agile Is a Train?”
Overall though the striking thing about the talk is the perspective that CD is an organisational decision that you make and it is the entire ‘Agile’ process (if you want to call it that). So you can’t bolt CD onto what you’re doing, you’ve got to go all in.
Also worth checking out Bryan and community’s MinimumViableCD.com to find out more.
Richard Bown is a writer and freelance software engineer. He is the author of HUMAN SOFTWARE a novel where small-town folk go up against AI and heartless corporate profiteering. Find out more and buy at humansoftwarebook.com
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