Introduction
The Plan for this issue is to:
Briefly assess the current state of modern software delivery
Explain where lean software delivery and the DevOps movement came from
Introduce the topics that I’ll cover in future issues of this newsletter
Introduce myself
Let’s Do it:
As an industry, we’ve come a long way since the days before the Agile Manifesto. We’ve certainly improved our software delivery methods. But the systems and processes around us have become more challenging faster than we have improved.
Businesses and customers demand that software teams deliver value at a rate much higher than they can manage. At the same time, budgets are constantly shrinking, and with interest rates no longer at zero, funding is more challenging than ever to raise. Further, our cloud environments grow more complex, expensive, and problematic to operate and secure daily.
What is the future of software delivery?
How do we keep up with the needs of our businesses and customers?
Modern software delivery is built on a body of prior knowledge. In the early 2000s, industry leaders like Kent Beck, Mary Poppendieck, and David Anderson started applying principles from Walter Shewhart, Edwards Deming, Taiichi Ohno, and the Toyota Production System to software delivery.
In the 2010s, community leaders like Patrick Debois, Gene Kim, Jez Humble, John Willis, and Nicole Forsgren continued building on the same ideas by doubling down on people, culture, and organisational structures through the DevOps movement.
Still, many teams who apply these principles need help to keep up with customer demands, security threats, budgets, and timelines. How come?
This newsletter
In future issues of this newsletter, we will study how the software industry has applied the ideas of Shewhart, Deming, and Ohno. Then, we will form new hypotheses about reapplying their principles to DevOps and software delivery to achieve better outcomes. Some of the topics we will study include:
Continuous improvement, PDSA cycle, Toyota Kata, and agile retrospectives
Deming’s appreciation for systems thinking
Deming’s knowledge of variation and Shewhart’s process behaviour charts applied to software delivery
Ohno’s Gemba concept applied to remote software teams
The author
My name is Dick Olsson, I’m a Director and Principal Engineering Lead at Pfizer. For almost two decades, I’ve led diverse software teams in different industries and parts of the world.
Whether my teams were delivering software to support journalists at Al Jazeera during societal unrest or rapidly responding to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic at Pfizer, I’ve learned that Time is Life, Trust is Everything and Science Will Win.
I want to finish this introductory issue by thanking Dave Hall and Michael Godeck, two colleagues and mentors who independently influenced my thinking about software delivery in recent years.
Feedback
I would love to Study and Act on your feedback. Please leave a comment!
All views and opinions expressed here and in future issues of this newsletter are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer or anyone I reference.