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Deploy Everything You Touch

January 23, 2023 by Jay Cuthrell

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Music: Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch (2005)

This week we take a look at continuous deployment and… turtles. 🐢

Getting Informed

Okay, I promise this will be the last time. Yes, I reached back into ChatGPT with tongue firmly planted in cheek. 🐢

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At the risk of this becoming a ChatGPT Canary, I can assure you this issue of the newsletter was typed in by me.

On a more serious non-turtle racing note, the definition of continuous deployment still extends to the ambitions beyond continuous delivery and continuous integration. As such, it’s worth taking a look at claims from various companies around their embrace of continuous deployment. 🐢

Anything that may desert you 🎶

By 2016, published research papers from Facebook indicated ~5,000 deployments per week was possible with an average of 3.5 software updates per developer placed into production per week using continuous deployment. Indeed, the developers appeared to _move fast and break things_ before they would _move fast and fix things_.

By 2021, Facebook’s internal Conveyor tool for continuous deployment had reached ~100,000 deployments per week. Apparently, _move fast and break things_ begat _move fast with stable infra_.

Source: Systems @Scale 2019 - Continuous Deployment at Facebook Scale

I guess you could say this continuous deployment topic is very… Meta 🤓. So, turtles all the way down aside, perhaps continuous deployment is for the birds^[1].

You only have to look behind you 🎶

Yes, the continuous deployment numbers can be dizzying for business to consumer (B2C) companies that are known for massive at scale services across various channels, modalities, devices, and platforms. However, it is important to consider how pervasive software development and deployment of software is becoming across every industry as digital transformation is embraced by more and more companies — continuous deployment isn’t just for Meta (Facebook).

Presently, the role of a human in continuous deployment will involve a past, present, and future. For a great discussion about the tension of legacy and the promise of a _promise theory_, check out James Shore’s Agile Book Club: Continuous Deployment with Kelsey Hightower (38 minutes of awesome sauce).

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