The Business Value of CD

Written by: Brian Dawson
4 min read

Continuous delivery allows you to deliver new software and update existing software faster, with lower risk.

Reducing risk is important, but the processes that underpin continuous delivery translate into even more important values to the business:

  • Accelerate time-to-value. A small business doesn’t need an MBA to recognize that continuous delivery helps them get things done. A big business that has mapped out its value stream and has complex investments and obligations across a large organization will find that continuous delivery helps accelerate time-to-value.

  • Data-driven decision making. Deploy, measure, adjust. You can still push larger scale releases, but your processes will be better suited to continuous data gathering. That will shorten the feedback loop with your customers. It sharpens your ability to respond, plan your next move, and keep ahead of the competition.

  • Quality. Behaving like you’re releasing continuously forces you to raise your quality bar and fully automate test practices. Better quality means happier customers, lower costs, fewer fire-drills, and less unplanned work.

  • Experimentation = innovation. Developers and lines of business are free to try new ideas cheaply, unlocking innovative ideas that have been penned-in behind long high-investment release cycles.

  • Reduce cost. Big releases have big costs and big consequences when things go wrong. Keeping deliverables in a release-ready state drives the cost of delivery downward.

Together these values make continuous delivery a real game-changer for business. While adoption can begin and be proven at a team/project level, the nature of continuous delivery is that it crosses organizational boundaries in ways that require a real investment and top-down commitment. Choosing a continuous delivery toolchain that complements and coexists with your existing investments is a key step toward success, especially because continuous delivery can lead your organization to adopting a DevOps culture.

Continuous delivery opens up entirely new ways to create better software. Continuous delivery is a hot topic at a business level, for a number of good reasons:

  • Early adopters have proven its value. Mainstream adopters have both observed its advantages and felt the competitive sting as their more nimble competitors outpace them.

  • DevOps as a movement has gained traction. Business people understand that having a common understanding between development and ops, breaking down siloed behavior, and developing a culture of responsibility across the organization is a key step to improved effectiveness and time-to-market. In many ways, continuous delivery is synonymous with DevOps.

  • As software “eats the world,” it’s becoming clearer every day to business leaders that IT must be used as a strategic asset. Being able to shorten delivery times, improve quality, and adapt to change quickly while properly dealing with security, availability, and compliance is the challenge. Continuous delivery, with its emphasis on automation and early, directed feedback, is the means to achieve some of those goals.

  • When you enable cheap, low-risk experimentation through continuous delivery, you can direct business investments with more information, and uncover opportunities you would otherwise completely miss.

Continuous delivery is transforming the way that businesses use their IT assets to connect with customers and partners. Continuous delivery builds on years of hard-won experience in agile processes and continuous integration to bring those benefits to a business level, instead of simply being techniques used by development teamsand ultimately supports a DevOps transformation . Many of the keys to success are rooted in organizational and cultural transformation, as development and operations personnel learn how to collaborate and share responsibilities. The technology toolchain that enables this transformation, whether organization-wide or locally, likely includes Jenkins. By extending the scale at which Jenkins can be used, and by providing a platform that supports a hybrid model for Jenkins – on-premise, in the cloud, or hybrid – CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise is an essential tool for organizations moving to continuous delivery today and DevOps in the future.

Learn more from the whitepaper: The Business Value of Continuous Delivery .

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