Straight-Through Quality Introducing the Agile concepts of Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery to the Business.

Scope:

This article will show how to start off a conversation with Business stake holders around the concepts of CI (Continuous Integration [1]) / CD (Continuous Delivery [2]).

Problem:

CI/CD can be a difficult concept to relay due to the amount of infrastructure and set-up that is required to get it going. Stake-holders can often baulk at the ask on start-up time and cost that this can incur.

Of course there are plenty of metrics and articles out there that explain how in fact these Agile approaches in the mid-to-long term reduce cost and time to market. But this requires heavy reading validation by the Business investors.

To avoid a dulling of eyes and a loss of focus from your stake holders you need to get fast buy in, using language they understand.

Solution:

Fortunately plenty of Business users are familiar with the concept of using Straight-Through Processing [3] to automate away many of the problems they have. This approach has been used quite extensively within the financial services industry and beyond. It is a proven technique.

Thus the start of conversation will often go like so:

"Have you heard of Straight-Through Processing?"

Customer nods head

"Well Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery is the techie-talk for what you would call Straight-Through Quality"

At this point using the concept of STQ (Straight-Through Quality [4]), it should now be a lot easier to explain some of the more fundamental Business benefits of CI/CD to to get their buy-in. Slowly proving these side-by-side with the multitude of metrics and endorsements you can obtain from all over the net.

Yes it's as simple as that. Once you speak their language they then have a reference point to baseline all the future conversations you have with them on CI/CD. As in the end to them its STQ.

Example:

Below is an example application of STQ using CD to shorten the delivery time [5]:

You can see from the above diagram that Quality runs straight through the delivery life-cycle as a constant flow. STQ is your STP enabler.

Agile Link:

STQ is also present on my Agile Development Poster [6] where the output is the Quality Enhanced Delivery. Which also links nicely into the first Agile manifesto principal of:

"Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software." [7]

I have rarely seen a lack of customer satisfaction when receiving Straight-Through Quality.

References:

[1] Continuous Integration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration

[2] Continuous Delivery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_delivery

[3] Straight-Through Processing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight-through_processing

[4] Straight-Through Quality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight-Through_Quality

[5] Continuous Delivery Book:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912

[6] Agile Development Poster: http://agiledogma.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/agile-development-poster-there-are.html

[7] Agile Manifesto Principles: http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html