Weekly Top 12: Takeaways from Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Episode 39: CD Automation

Earlier this week, we hosted a Continuous Discussion (#c9d9) on Continuous Delivery (CD) automation and orchestration , featuring expert panelists Dondee Tan, Test Architect at Alaska Air, Taco Bakker, a LEAN Six Sigma black belt focusing on CD, and our own Sam Fell and Anders Wallgren. During this episode, we discussed the differences between CD automation and orchestration, their challenges with setting up CD pipelines and some of the common chokepoints, as well as some best practices and tips for implementing CD. A theme has emerged during the discussion: how do you standardize and normalize your CD processes and pipeline across the organization- to enable reuse across teams and predictability across all your apps/environments.  (And, also, as Dondee puts it: "You're able to save the company money by standardizing, so it's two birds with the same stone" Below, we offer 10 of the best practices and takeaways from the episode that will guide - or remedy - your Continuous Delivery adoption. Want more? Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) is a live, bi-weekly, free podcast hosted by CloudBees, featuring expert panelists covering topics related to Agile, DevOps and Continuous Delivery. Join us on Tuesday, May 3^rd at 10 a.m. PDT for our next episode on CD for legacy applications.

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Per, @DondeeTan : "Have everyone be accountable for quality" | #c9d9 #agile #continuousdelivery pic.twitter.com/XuhSZQlaXf

— CloudBees (@electriccloud) April 19, 2016

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One of the large pitfalls is getting people into the #ContinuousDelivery mindset | @tsbakker65 #c9d9 pic.twitter.com/HbTyeIWMpE — CloudBees (@electriccloud) April 19, 2016

3 There are three things to think about when talking about Continuous Delivery: velocity, quality and cost. - @DondeeTan    

4 If you make sure to keep your data somewhere else, you can upgrade # Containers at any time. - @tsbakker65    

5 Standardizing gets you predictability, quality and velocity – adding in automation and orchestration helps this process. - @samueldfell    

6 Don’t think you will leave on Friday doing waterfall and come in on Monday doing CD. - @anders_wallgren    

7 In Continuous Delivery you often think of velocity, but take time to look at the small things that will make a quality app – security, performance testing. - @DondeeTan    

8 You want to have a tool that can deploy agnostic of your environments. - @tsbakker65    

9 Have a good monitoring system in place when doing CD – things will get exposed when you have the right system in place. - @DondeeTan    

10 Making the islands of automation better is interesting, but you need to look at the whole system to ensure you are optimizing the right part. - @samueldfell    

11 You want your organization as a whole to be constantly learning and celebrating their software – the only way to do this is to standardize. - @tsbakker65    

12 Think about a tool that will work well for the team and not one individual. - @DondeeTan