Continuous software engineering and beyond: trends and challenges

Abstract

Throughout its short history, software development has been characterized by harmful disconnects between important activities e.g., planning, development and implementation. The problem is further exacerbated by the episodic and infrequent performance of activities such as planning, testing, integration and releases. Several emerging phenomena reflect attempts to address these problems. For example, the Enterprise Agile concept has emerged as a recognition that the benefits of agile software development will be suboptimal if not complemented by an agile approach in related organizational function such as finance and HR. Continuous integration is a practice which has emerged to eliminate discontinuities between development and deployment. In a similar vein, the recent emphasis on DevOps recognizes that the integration between software development and its operational deployment needs to be a continuous one. We argue a similar continuity is required between business strategy and development, BizDev being the term we coin for this. These disconnects are even more problematic given the need for reliability and resilience in the complex and data-intensive systems being developed today. Drawing on the lean concept of flow, we identify a number of continuous activities which are important for software development in today's context. These activities include continuous planning, continuous integration, continuous deployment, continuous delivery, continuous verification, continuous testing, continuous compliance,continuous security, continuous use, continuous trust, continuous run-time monitoring, continuous improvement (both process and product), all underpinned by continuous innovation. We use the umbrella term, "Continuous *" (continuous star) to identify this family of continuous activities.

Hitting the Target: Practices for Moving Toward Innovation Experiment Systems

“…The adoption of these practices reflects an evolution in which companies move beyond agile practices towards R&D practices characterised by short release cycles, frequent customer validation and fully automated testing and deployment practices. Although the same agile R&D principles apply, moving beyond agile practices means: a) integrating business strategy planning, operations and other corporate functions into shorter development and release cycles [4], [15]; b) utilising automated testing practices that allow for frequent builds [12] and c) implementing continuous experimentation and innovation with customers [2,3,4] to better understand real customer needs. The specific aspects involved in going beyond agile as well as more holistic views of agility have been discussed in recent SE studies [15,16] and especially in the context of lean software development [17].…”

“…Although the same agile R&D principles apply, moving beyond agile practices means: a) integrating business strategy planning, operations and other corporate functions into shorter development and release cycles [4], [15]; b) utilising automated testing practices that allow for frequent builds [12] and c) implementing continuous experimentation and innovation with customers [2,3,4] to better understand real customer needs. The specific aspects involved in going beyond agile as well as more holistic views of agility have been discussed in recent SE studies [15,16] and especially in the context of lean software development [17]. As recognised in these studies, the main motivation for companies moving beyond agile is that, even though agile practices can improve R&D efficiency and product quality, they are insufficient for achieving benefits in a business ecosystem [18] and at the enterprise level [16].…”

A Practical Approach to Software Continuous Delivery Focused on Application Lifecycle Management

“…Fitzgerald and Stol [4] published trends and challenges related to what the authors called "Continuous *", which is, all topics related to software delivery that can be classified as continuous. The authors addressed issues such as; Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Publication (PC), Continuous Testing (CT), Continuous Compliance (CC), Continuous Security (SC), Continuous Delivery (EC), among others.…”

“…There is a growing interest in practices to overcome these problems [4]. Such practices are known as Software Continuous Delivery (SCD), defined as the ability to publish software whenever necessary.…”

“…Additionally, the management of the activities of application lifecycle, support this approach and help all team members to improve their process [2], [4]. Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) has been proposed with the objective to provide a comprehensive technical solution for monitoring, controlling and managing software development over the whole application lifecycle [5].…”