Grigor Khachatryan

Director of Engineering, Platform | Los Angeles, CA


Continuous Delivery Metrics Will Start Being Mapped to Business Value and ROI

Published July 3, 2021

Nothing has the power to change industries as well-designed software solutions. Today, the most successful companies, such as Tesla, Airbnb, Uber, and many other businesses, use their own software solutions to ensure that they provide the best service possible. The push for changes has led to a complete transformation in the way companies and even governments conduct business. Software solutions are usually more reliable and provide a better experience for the user as well as the provider. As companies race to improve their digital platforms and provide better services, various tools like DevOps and agile have become the go-to solutions. These tools are designed to enhance services through continuous testing, monitoring, and feedback. Constant feedback is imperative, and it comes in the form of metrics that are then used to pinpoint problems and find solutions. With the right mapping, these software solutions become better over time.

The Value of Continuous Feedback Delivery

The development phase requires excellent teamwork, empathy, and the right tools. Companies have to make sure that their software solutions are in tune with their business objectives, and the best way to do that is to use metrics taken from continuous feedback. Knowing exact numbers for every step of the development process is a must if you want to find the point where an idea starts producing value. After you gather the feedback and extract the information you need, you can use the metrics to improve your business. More feedback means making better changes that improve overall value.

Importance of Feedback Metrics

Many companies and IT executives make the mistake of not using metrics to better understand their company’s SDLC and MTTRi. Instead of tracking essential details, they play the guessing game and have a hard time providing numbers that can prove that their decisions have led to better results. Even if they use the available tools they can use to extract important data, they don’t integrate them with one another, which leads to a huge mess when it comes to extracting the right metrics. Manual data collection is even worse. As a result, most managers have to produce average numbers by heart. Metrics can help you monitor every stage of the DevOps cycle and help you make the right business decisions to improve your services. The data you get can help you improve delivery times, reduce costs, and scale your business online quickly and effectively.

Benefits of Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery is a potent tool that can help you improve velocity, productivity, and ensure sustainability for your software developers. In other words, the people responsible for improving your software platform will always have the right information to help them make the right decisions. Here’s a quick overview of some of the benefits your business gets from continuous delivery and feedback.

Velocity

Continuous software delivery allows you to make changes according to the market. You will be able to predict what’s going on and make the right changes quickly. If done right, you will be able to beat your competition and provide solutions before everyone else. While acting on time gives you an advantage, you must make sure that your moves are based on the right information. Speed is useless if you rush with solutions that don’t provide expected results. The bottom line is — when it comes to continuous delivery, speed is as important as quality.

Productivity

Your teams will be productive only if they are happy. Having happy employees is always a good thing, but if you want to keep a competitive edge, the best way to go is to use pipelines for repetitive tasks rather than humans. That will leave your teams more time to focus on perfecting the idea while leaving the execution to the pipelines. When your pipelines find issues, your teams can start fixing them immediately and repeat the process until everything is in perfect working order.

Sustainability

Running a successful business is a long-term race. Coming up with something that helps you take the lead is excellent, but keeping that lead is a challenge for itself. Your competition will also try their best to overtake you, which is why you have to stay focused and keep working hard on new solutions continuously.

However, if you put your developers under pressure, they will burn out at some point, which can negatively affect your business plans. Working smart is always better than working hard, and that’s why you should leave repetitive work for computers. They never get tired, and they don’t make mistakes.

You should use all available technologies to get an edge over the competition. Using automated pipelines will help you cut down on manual labor, saving you money and help you take the load off your human resources. It’s true, investing in such a system requires a lot of funds, but if you organize your pipelines correctly, you will be able to get more done faster. Continuous delivery provides flexibility when it comes to delivering new fixes and features.

You can test and develop specific sets of features for specific customers and create multiple releases simultaneously. Continuous delivery is simply a tool that tells you what to do, when to do it, and how your actions will improve your offers.

The Bottom Line

There’s no doubt that continuous delivery provides some useful benefits that can improve the way your business works. It will help you optimize the workflow and ensure that your human resources stay on top of their game by lifting weights off their shoulders. You will leave more time for your teams to focus on what needs doing, and your automated pipelines will crunch data and provide you with useful metrics faster and more efficiently than any employee. That will prevent burnouts and optimize your business for the long run. So, don’t think about it and start making the right moves right now!