Reference Architecture

As you will have seen in the Best Practices guide, Continuous Delivery is a commercial methodology that is predicated upon a specific organizational culture. To realize the benefits of the methodology within an existing entity, it will almost certainly be necessary to impose some level of organizational change. In this section, we will look at some of the challenges you are likely to encounter on this journey and introduce key concepts that will help you to make the right decisions when pursuing the adoption of Continuous Delivery.

Views and Viewpoints

Within your organization, there will be a range of different stakeholders, each with a different perspective, incentives and goals. In order to successfully transform to Continuous Delivery, it is essential to understand and align these viewpoints so that every team within the organization is capable of delivering at the cadence necessary to support Continuous Delivery.

It is imperative to understand every viewpoint and to document the view from each viewpoint, so that the full picture of the overarching problem space can be communicated and considered for enabling business change.

Drivers and Constraints

To successfully drive business change, it is essential to be able to clearly communicate the reasoning behind that change, and to be able to measure every decision and action against this overarching goal. It is common for these early reasons to rapidly become lost in the confusion of transformation, leading to a significant risk of failure to deliver against the original goals of the work.

To avoid this, it is important to clearly document the drivers behind the transformation and to refer back to these regularly in the decision-making process, particularly when engaging with new stakeholders or teams.

It is also important to keep this communication asset updated with any constraints that are uncovered during the process. In a significant cultural transformation like Continuous Delivery, it is not uncommon to find endemic problems that act as hard blockers to the overall goal. Ignoring these will inevitably lead to the failure of the transformation, so it is critical to shine a light on these issues as soon as they arise and to find ways to eliminate them before investing too heavily in later stages of work.

Capabilities

Whilst it is likely that your organization already has many of the capabilities necessary to succeed with Continuous Delivery, there will always be new technologies, tools, skills and habits that must be acquired in order to optimize process. An early understanding of what is needed will help to de-risk the transformation process.

Assessment of Readiness

To build confidence, it can be beneficial to start with an assessment of readiness to undertake the transformation. This considers the current state of maturity of the organization with respect to the methodology, highlights gaps and sets expectations. It should also confirm the existence of strong support from key senior stakeholders and act as the demand signal for change to start.