What Do We Really Want?

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Have we ever asked ourselves "Why are we doing continuous integration/delivery?" A weird question right?

It Makes Sense

Almost every shop we know of says we need to go faster and deliver more content at higher quality. We grind and toil to make that happen. We learn that we can automatically build and test code. Tests pass and we are good! We are happy. We pass the hard work over to QA and expect them to give our code the final blessing. Sometimes, let's be honest MOST of the time, it comes back and we have to work on something to fix it.

The final OK is given and we send it to DevOps/IT and it is released to the wild. We are proud. We got it out. And yet, there is sometimes a sense of impending doom. A little voice in the back of our heads saying: just wait. Or saying "What did we miss?"

If It Makes Sense, Why The Doubt?

So if all the effort to do continuous integration is worth it then why do we have doubts? Why do we find doubts in other parts of the company? Because, we are focussed on the wrong thing. Yes, we should be doing continuous integration, but it should be under the context of Continuous Confidence. What is it? Simply put, we should be striving to prove that we can be trusted.

How do we gain Continuous Confidence?

We gain continuous confidence by focusing on proving others can trust us. We gain it by asking, what do we lack to further gain their trust. Each organization is different and have different criteria. An organization and product that has been around for years and has had a lot of ups and downs, might require a different set of rigorous proofs before an organization is comfortable and confident with the release process. A small company might be just fine with automated testing and deploying. Each organization gets to choose.

So, ultimately, what everyone is seeking is to make sure we don't break user's experience. We want to make sure that they trust us. When we hear from a customer that they are disappointed, instead of saying sorry and moving on, they want to hear that they are being heard and that they can have confidence the same problem won't happen again.

Ultimately, we all want Continuous Confidence in what we do.

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