04 - Technical Practices скачать в хорошем качестве

04 - Technical Practices

This chapter reviews the link between technical practices and delivery performance, connecting the Extreme Programming tradition with Continuous Delivery. It explains what continuous delivery means, why it reduces risk by decreasing change size, and how technical capabilities create a system where integrating, testing, and deploying become routine rather than a painful "event." Additionally, it grounds which specific practices support this approach and what evidence exists about their impact: version control as a foundation, test automation, continuous integration, and building a pipeline that makes the system's state visible. The common thread is that quality and speed don't compete if you invest in automation, fast feedback, and work that keeps software always in a deployable state. The chapter emphasizes that continuous delivery is a set of capabilities, not a goal to be achieved. It requires comprehensive version control (including configuration and scripts), trunk-based development to avoid long-lived branches, test automation at multiple levels, and deployment automation that makes releasing software a low-risk, push-button affair. Research findings demonstrate that these practices strongly predict both software delivery performance and organizational performance. Teams that excel at continuous delivery can deploy on demand, with deployments that are low-risk events that can be performed during normal business hours. The technical practices create a virtuous cycle: better practices lead to better performance, which creates more time and capacity to invest in further improvements, compounding the advantage of high performers over time.