Forrester: DevTestOps and Continuous Delivery Pipelines

From Diego Lo Guidice's Continuous Delivery Conference keynote:

What Is a Continuous Delivery Pipeline?

Continuous Delivery involves transforming people, process, and technology for one primary goal: being able to promote code from one phase to the next at the push of a button.

If you really want to increase your velocity, rapidly moving code from one stage to the next is critical. However, even if some parts of your portfolio aren't yet fully Agile, you can still use this type of pipeline; you just push the button less frequently.

What Is DevTestOps?

Testing lies at the heart of the Continuous Delivery pipeline. That's why I use the term "DevTestOps." You have to automate unit tests, functional tests, process tests, performance tests—and code gets kicked back if expectations are not met.

I believe that the line between development and maintenance is blurring, and organizations won't have separate development and maintenance in the future. It will be one product development stream, and you'll be in charge of your own bugs.

Moreover, I anticipate that there will be heavy pressure to fix bugs immediately because if you start creating a sizeable backlog of bugs (a.k.a. "technical debt") you just can't achieve the velocity that Agile requires. You'll struggle to keep pace with the accelerated schedules that the business now demands.

More Continuous Delivery Keynote Excerpts

Want to learn more from Diego Lo Guidice's Continuous Delivery Conference keynote? Check out these earlier blogs and videos:

• Forrester: Why Continuous Testing is Vital for Quality @ Speed: How testing needs to evolve in order to enable quality at speed for Agile and DevOps.
• Forrester: Barriers and Best Practices for Scaling Agile: The top 3 reasons Agile fails, how "Agile Expert" firms overcome common barriers, and Agile best practices.
• Forrester: What’s the Role of Testing in Agile and DevOps?: The importance of integrating testers and testing practices into your development teams.
• Test Automation, API Testing, and Service Virtualization in DevOps: Why test automation, API testing, and service virtualization are critical to agile development initiatives as organizations shift to continuous delivery, Agile, and DevOps.