Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble, David Farley

I have just read book „Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation” by Jez Humble, David Farley. Great position for all of you, who already had problems with releasing software. Have you ever got stuck with builds, which couldn't be released because all those showstopper bugs still were discovered during manual tests? How many times you heard from your developer „It works on my machine”? How many hours your team must spend in order to make and test build for the client? 2 days of whole team work isn't enough? Just read „ Continuous Delivery...” and look how release process may be repeatable, pain less, fully automated. Book is written by experienced software engineers, who gave a lot of problems from real projects and how it were improved. During reading I reminded myself I meet similar problems in my projects. What impressed me:

• not always the modern (and often the most expensive) tools is the best option. For example: you definitely need some version control system: but for small projects git may be to complicated. Old proven SVN still is a good choice
• do re-factor after every developed feature. Do not leave „technological dept”. Your code should be ready to developing nest features.
• do not change everything in your release process in one moment: first automate a build, the tests, then write deployment scripts etc
• try to keep simple solutions: if your software consist of many components, build and release its in one deployment pipeline. You will split components into different plans in your build server when it is necessary

My recommendation for: „Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation” - definitely read!