Having to skip the Linux User's Group to stay late at work definitely made me have second thoughts--and positive ones at that--about continuous deployment. Mind you, that was a concept that I formerly assumed to be better suited to the uber-caffeinated software development shops. You know--folks who have to slam a six-pack of Mountain Dew to fall asleep.
Understand that I don't subscribe to "Better is the enemy of done." Rather, I think that it's more like "Perfect is the enemy of done." The continuous deployment antidote to that is to ship whatever improvements are available on an fixed basis--no excuses. Which in my uninformed-by-real-life-experience, has a few things to recommend it:
- Neutralizing the perfectionists (speaking, of course, as a recovering perfectionist who still falls off the proverbial wagon from time to time)
- Forcing investment into the promotion process. In other words, if it isn't much more than a sanity-check before punching a single button, it's probably too Rube Goldberg.
- Shifting the focus from "what could be done" toward "what can be done"
Understand that I'm making a distinction between "toward" and "to" in that last line item. Sweeping, visionary changes still have to be made, or the organization will become bankrupt (if for-profit) or irrelevant (if not). But, much less than visionaries like to admit, some large strides can be broken into baby steps. If--and this is a B-movie-monster-sized "if"--the commitment to forward momentum is already there. And it seems to me that a commitment to continuous deployment amounts to much the same thing.
You can tell yourself that you hire only the best. But the best--if only in relative terms--will still split between the get-'er-done faction and the pie-in-the-sky faction. You need both. And, from where I sit (working among both crowds), the commitment to release some improvement every day/week/month is a pretty solid compromise. It gives the get-'er-done crowd the sense of momentum, and keeps the feet of the pie-in-the-sky folks rooted in terra firma.
Mind you, this is pure ignorant enthusiasm talking, and that from someone who emphatically did not appreciate having her plans disrupted by (relative) ill-preparedness. But you can bet it'll be tucked into the rollout post-mortem to the Alpha-geek.
