Continuous Delivery Office Hours
Oct 12, 2026 · 24 min · 12 segments
In this episode of Continuous Delivery Office Hours, Tony, Bob, and Steve propose a raising of standards for software delivery. While most development teams can agree on some basic capabilities, like…
Steve FentonGuestIt's a bit like, uh, it's a bit like the lawyer who asks a question at trial where they already know the answer.
[laughs] No, we want, we definitely wanna set the bi- bar higher than just version control at this day and age.
Um, there are practices that are out there that have been established that we just know that, that we know that they work.
Quite frankly, they've been around for 10, 15, 20 years at this point in time, if not longer than some practices I remember in previous episodes Steve and I have been talking about that go, date back to the, the, the '60s and '70s.
Like, like, oh, those are old, we don't have to worry about any of that other stuff.
Like, second rainiest month in Omaha's history that since they started recording this.
And so we've been rain, rain, rain, rain, and then the very last night, they just dumped the massive amount of rain, so our ground was soaked.
Now why is this important? So I live at the bottom of a hill, and I have a basement, and lots of people's basements, they were flooded, but my basement wasn't flooded, and this is because I had drainage tiles, I had a s- and I had a sump pump, and I had a sump pump reservoir.
I mean, it was emptying that reservoir, I think it was a 20-gallon res- reservoir, every 30 seconds.
But the key point, the reason why I bring this up is that all of that, the drainage tiles, the sump pump, the sump pump reservoir, all of that, that has been around since the '40s.
Now the technology has changed, but the core concepts remain the same, and the same thing holds true for when it comes to software delivery.
But the core principles remain the same, the things that we need to really worry about.
We have got to a point now, especially, like, we're in 2026 right now, we've got decades of really strong research about this stuff, um, including the likes of Dora's research, and they're very considered when they talk about it all, and they say, "Look, we're not gonna tell you what you have to do, but we all wanna get better at getting better." But I think it might be time for a slightly more forceful approach where we actually say, "You know what? Like, not everything is about context and preference now.
There's a few things that they- they're not really on the table as, like, optional practices, and you can't choose not to do them, um, because you think you don't need them or because actually they just seem like a lot of work and you don't wanna do them." So yeah, like, it, it took a long time, I think, to get everyone to agree to use version control, but then once everyone kind of, like, we hit that tipping point, and then it was kind of weird when you spoke to someone who wasn't using it.
I feel the same way now when I'm speaking to teams that don't have any test automation as an example.
It's like, really? So you're either having to continuously manually test this stuff, or you're deciding actually you're not gonna test it and therefore your customers are now, uh, not being paid, but are now testing your software for you and getting frustrated by, you know, what you deliver to them.
It's a bit like, uh, it's a bit like the lawyer who asks a question at trial where they already know the answer.
[laughs] No, we want, we definitely wanna set the bi- bar higher than just version control at this day and age.
Um, there are practices that are out there that have been established that we just know that, that we know that they work.
Quite frankly, they've been around for 10, 15, 20 years at this point in time, if not longer than some practices I remember in previous episodes Steve and I have been talking about that go, date back to the, the, the '60s and '70s.
Like, like, oh, those are old, we don't have to worry about any of that other stuff.
Like, second rainiest month in Omaha's history that since they started recording this.
And so we've been rain, rain, rain, rain, and then the very last night, they just dumped the massive amount of rain, so our ground was soaked.
Now why is this important? So I live at the bottom of a hill, and I have a basement, and lots of people's basements, they were flooded, but my basement wasn't flooded, and this is because I had drainage tiles, I had a s- and I had a sump pump, and I had a sump pump reservoir.
I mean, it was emptying that reservoir, I think it was a 20-gallon res- reservoir, every 30 seconds.
But the key point, the reason why I bring this up is that all of that, the drainage tiles, the sump pump, the sump pump reservoir, all of that, that has been around since the '40s.
Now the technology has changed, but the core concepts remain the same, and the same thing holds true for when it comes to software delivery.
But the core principles remain the same, the things that we need to really worry about.
We have got to a point now, especially, like, we're in 2026 right now, we've got decades of really strong research about this stuff, um, including the likes of Dora's research, and they're very considered when they talk about it all, and they say, "Look, we're not gonna tell you what you have to do, but we all wanna get better at getting better." But I think it might be time for a slightly more forceful approach where we actually say, "You know what? Like, not everything is about context and preference now.
There's a few things that they- they're not really on the table as, like, optional practices, and you can't choose not to do them, um, because you think you don't need them or because actually they just seem like a lot of work and you don't wanna do them." So yeah, like, it, it took a long time, I think, to get everyone to agree to use version control, but then once everyone kind of, like, we hit that tipping point, and then it was kind of weird when you spoke to someone who wasn't using it.
I feel the same way now when I'm speaking to teams that don't have any test automation as an example.
It's like, really? So you're either having to continuously manually test this stuff, or you're deciding actually you're not gonna test it and therefore your customers are now, uh, not being paid, but are now testing your software for you and getting frustrated by, you know, what you deliver to them.
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