Continuous Delivery

In many software projects, it takes a long time before customers start to see results. When these long-awaited results don't meet the requirements, it can be fatal to the project. Progress can be seen in the test environments of the partner, but it doesn't make it to the customer. Since technical or qualitative issues cannot be identified until it is too late, project delays and overspending often cannot be avoided. To make sure this does not happen to our projects, we rely on continuous delivery. This way, we achieve excellence in project management and in the project result.

In order to implement continuous delivery in projects, there are two main prerequisites: The first is a collaborative, transparent project approach. At any time, customers, manufacturers and service providers should be able to view, comment on and add information to tasks and work packages that are open or in progress. So there's no need to deal with long feedback cycles or wait times until the next project management meeting. This is important, since such situations cause delays and defeat the purpose of continuous delivery. As a customer, after all, you cannot know or control what's behind them. So it helps to maintain communication between you and us, as your partner. The best way to achieve this is with user-friendly collaboration platforms, closely integrated into the development tools.

This brings us to the second prerequisite for continuous delivery – appropriate development technology. This technology should allow for seamless transparency and fully automated delivery of interim results. Only when these aspects require minimal effort will their advantages be actively utilized in the project and only then can there also be a positive effect on the project budget. 

Continually deliverable software and collaborative tools for project management allow for shorter feedback loops. This leads to noticeably better quality. Mistakes are avoided and short-term issues are resolved faster. This allows us to optimize customer value, since only the progress that actually makes its way to you, meets your requirements and works perfectly provides a real added value.

In order to implement continuous delivery, we use the Microsoft Azure DevOps development platform. We manage project and work packages using Azure Boards. The same goes for the all project- and task-related collaboration. So all the information required before or after a delivery in order to check and evaluate the result is always available. Open issues can be evaluated and resolved using the integrated Discussion area. Errors can be reported quickly and easily – and corrected promptly. So the next delivery already includes suitable solutions.

Reproducing organizational aspects on the technical side requires close integration between 

• task management (Azure Boards)
• source code management and 
• build and delivery tools. 

 This ensures that the implementation addresses precisely the things that bring you added value and that you have defined as requirements. 

We rely on Azure Repositories for source code management as well as Azure Pipelines for build (creation of deliverable packages) and delivery (delivery of the packages.)  The advantage of Azure DevOps is that all these tools are fully integrated on a simple, comprehensible platform. So it's always clear which tasks were completed with a delivery and which system (e.g. test, acceptance or production) these tasks were delivered to.

With the total package, including 

• collaborative and transparent work 
• professional source code management and
• automated build and delivery tools, 

we can ensure that you receive continuous deliveries from us as quickly as possible. So you can keep an eye on the progress of your project and make sure that your requirements are being implemented, right from the start. It also makes it possible to promptly identify and report any issues. This ensures that can already start utilizing the benefits of the project within a short time.