Continuous Delivery Foundation cdCon 2020, 20 Oct 2020

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From YouTube: Keynote: The Past, Present and Future of Continu... Tracy Miranda, Christie Wilson & Zainab Abubakar

Description

Keynote Session - The Past, Present and Future of Continuous Delivery - Tracy Miranda, Continuous Delivery Foundation, Christie Wilson, Google & Zainab Abubakar, She Code Africa

It is an exciting time to be in the CI/CD industry. We are delivering more software than ever before and at a rate and scale that we might not have imagined years ago. 15 years ago continuous integration and continuous delivery were not common practices but today they are the key differentiators for every industry, whether you are a releasing a new banking app or a new contact tracing app. Delivering software securely and speed matters to every aspect of modern life.

We have huge opportunities to innovate and advance continuous delivery adoption. Yet there are some challenges which make this difficult to do so. Being a relatively new industry, we often talk at cross purposes about terms and phrases – the same words mean vastly different things to different teams. The landscape is confusing, often impenetrable to newcomers and changing habits to adopt emerging practices sometimes feels overwhelming to teams.

In this talk, we will look at the origins of continuous delivery, how it has evolved to present day and where it is going. We will also talk about the role open source communities will play to make continuous delivery simpler yet more innovative, widespread yet inclusive and faster yet still secure.

Intro: (0:00)
Christie Wilson (Past): (0:28)
Tracy Miranda (Present): (5:49)
Zainab Abubakar (Future): (16:02)
Conclusion: (22:27)

A

Next, I had the pleasure of working with two amazing ladies on this next keynote christy wilson, who works at google and is the co-founder of the techtone project and zainab abubakar, who works at interswitch and is also the open source project coordinator for she-code africa.

A

Even with the remote collaboration. This was real fun to put together for you, so I hope you enjoyed as much as we did.

B

Hey everybody, I'm christy wilson, I'm a software engineer at google and I'm really excited to be talking to you today, even though I can't actually look at your faces while I'm making this, but this format does give us some advantages, I can do some things I couldn't do. If I was speaking to you face to face, I can introduce you to my cat. This is yoshimi.

B

She doesn't have a black belt in karate. She doesn't work for the city, but she does take lots of vitamins because she is 18 years old anyway, about two years ago I had the pleasure of working with some really cool people to make tecton.

B

But if you know me, then you'll know that wherever I've ended up, I've always ended up gravitating towards cicd related work. In fact, I'm so passionate about ci cd that I'm actually writing a book about it now. Now. Writing a book is a pretty intimidating thing, so I figured that I better just plunge right in and get started. Otherwise I would never do it, so I figured I'd start with something easy like a definition.

B

So I put my fingers to the keyboard and I started to type cicd is cicd? Is continuous integration? Slash continuous delivery? So I then, I really went down the rabbit hole. I started to define integration. I started to define delivery. I defined continuous. I got really caught up in the difference between continual and continuous, but in the end I found out something really interesting. That might surprise you, which is cicd, isn't real, and I say this as somebody who makes cicd tools and who is writing a book about ci cd.

B

Let me step back a bit and explain how I got to this conclusion. Let me take you through the history of continuous delivery. Our first stop is the 90s in 1994, a guy named grady booch he's the creator of uml coined the term continuous integration.

B

So at this point as early as 94, we have the term continuous integration, which is the ci in cicd, but we don't have a clear definition for it.

B

Yet in 1997 netscape releases tinderbox, which is maybe the first bonafide ci system, and then in 1999 we get extreme programming which has a lot of the same tenants as continuous integration, but doesn't mention it explicitly now, let's jump to the 2000s when things really start to get interesting in 2004, kosuke gets sick of breaking the build, so he creates hudson and he releases it to the world in 2005.

B

in 2007, continuous integration. Finally, officially becomes a thing with a book of the same name being published in the martin fowler signature collection. So in 2007 we have continuous integration and what it means is it's a software development practice where you integrate your changes frequently at least daily, and you verify those changes with automated builds and tests.

B

Finally, let's jump to the last decade when things start to happen really fast in 2010, we have the continuous delivery book come out by jez, humble and david farley, which makes continuous delivery a thing: that's the cd in cicd and what is continuous delivery.

B

It's a software development pattern or, as martin fowler calls it at the time, a discipline where every check-in leads to a potential release. This means you could release to production at any time and also the time between when you make a change and when it's available to users is minimized, then in 2011 hudson is forked and released as the project. We all know and love jenkins.

B

Now something strange happens in 2013. This is about three years after the continuous delivery book comes out, cicd just pops into existence on the internet as a term and as far as I can tell nobody actually created it. I do have a theory about where it came from, though, which I'll show you remember at this point. It's about three years after continuous delivery became a thing and six years after continuous integration became a thing. So you can imagine that both of these terms are kind of circulating around okay.

C

B

Increase velocity, we need to increase revenue. uh Maybe we should try that continuous integration thing.

B

Don't you mean continuous delivery.

B

And bam just like that, you've got ci cd, then look at the last five years. Tools start popping up like crazy. You've got spinnaker, screwdriver, jenkins, x, tecton and then in 2019 you've got the creation of the cdf.

B

So let's get back to the question that started all of this. What is cicd?

B

It's not a term that anybody created on purpose and if you look at the way we use it, it seems to mean ci or cd, because if you say I'm doing ci cd, you might mean you're running tests, or you might mean that you're deploying straight to production on every commit with a blue green rollout. It's all cicd thanks for joining me for my whirlwind tour of the past of continuous delivery.

B

Next tracy miranda is going to talk to you about the present.

A

Thank you christy. What a great summary of the past- hey, I'm tracy, and I'm going to walk you through the present of continuous delivery and then take a glimpse into the future. But first.

A

Christy, I love your new york backdrop, especially since we can't really travel so here's some gratuitous scenery of ottawa, canada where I live. This is the rideau river at a beautiful time of year,.

A

Also, I don't have a cat, but this is mumu who is very friendly, and the kids would like her to move in with us.

A

Now to the present, and we need to ask ourselves: why does continuous delivery matter?

A

But before we answer that question, let's do some context setting for three terms that are often used interchangeably and in a confusing way, especially if you're new to the area, agile, cicd and devops.

A

Remember we're not using ci cd anymore. Let's call it continuous delivery.

A

While there is overlap, each one tends to have a distinct focus, agile and processes, devops and culture, and continuous delivery on tools, and this is reflected in our cdcon program, where, while we touch on all these topics, there's a heavy focus on tools that help you drive the automation.

A

So why does continuous delivery matter?

A

Every business is under tremendous pressure to transform itself into a software business and continuous delivery is the cornerstone to this picture, an organization that can deliver new features faster than the competition picture, an organization that can take advantage of fast feedback from its users to have a much deeper relationship and picture an organization that can pivot when needed in a response to industry and world events.

A

Research shows these to be the impact of continuous delivery, but there's one more reason, one which to me is far more important than all of those, and that is burnout.

A

Now I don't know about you, but these last few months have been pretty challenging.

A

And with all this craziness going on in the world, the least we can do is have our professional lives, free of extra stress and as good as they can be.

A

Scientific evidence shows that investing in technical practices for continuous delivery reduces burnout and deployment pain like who doesn't want that.

A

Now this incredible research comes from the amazing book that is called by nicole fortune, jazz, humble and gene kim. I cannot recommend this book enough read this book. It spells out exactly what we need to do to become high performing technology organizations and, let's see what accelerate has to say about continuous delivery.

A

Continuous delivery is a set of capabilities that enable us to get changes of all kinds features, configuration changes, bug, fixes experiments into the into production or into the hands of our users safely quickly and sustainably, and it goes on to outline eight continuous delivery capabilities.

A

Let's take a quick look at these, but go outside and enjoy some of that fall scenery. The eight continuous delivery capabilities are number one use version, control for all production, artifacts, two automate your deployment process, three implement continuous integration, four use, trunk-based development methods, five implement test automation, six support test data management, seven shift left on security; eight implement continuous delivery.

A

So we know what continuous delivery is and why we should be doing it, but the reality is that most of us are not really doing it, certainly not as well as we could be, and I think this comes down to three main reasons.

A

So the first is the rise of cloud native and microservices has led to a shift in technology under our feet. While it has dramatically improved what we can achieve, especially when it comes to scaling.

A

There are many challenges: teams that were working on a monolithic code base, deploying a monolithic application, only had a small number of environments to worry about, but now there is a proliferation of environments and code bases that makes continuous delivery more challenging. Yet ever more important.

A

Second we've seen a rise in the number of tools in the continuous delivery landscape.

A

However, it is usually left to the user to figure out how to put those tools together in a way that works to create a full solution- and this is often a case of a lot of trial and error.

A

That, coupled with a lot of confusion and fud, makes it very challenging to figure out what works best for you, and on top of that we have new technology coming at us at a rate faster than ever before.

A

Now. The third thing is simply that change is hard.

A

People and organization have limits on the amount of change they can absorb at any one time.

A

Well, that's certainly what we thought, but we've learned to change our habits a lot. In the last few months, we've learned to socially distance, wear a mask and wash our hands as if we're going into surgery.

A

Well, most of us have.

A

Change is hard, but it turns out when it becomes necessary or when we have a shared purpose, then we are able to adapt much faster than we think we can, but nevertheless this still remains challenging for most of us.

A

So that sums up our present, we know what continuous delivery is. We know why to do it, but we still need to figure out how- and I think that's why we're all here today, so we can do that together.

A

Okay, now on to the future, there is a saying that the future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed, and that is very much the case in our industry.

A

Our community is helping build that future and there is so much I could say about it, but I am not going to talk about the power of gitops or the impact of progressive delivery or the paradigm shift that is mlops.

A

There are folks who are far more qualified and far more into the space talking about that here today.

A

Instead, what I'm going to talk about is the future that involves open source and people.

A

We know that open source thrives in difficult times like a recession, and this is in part to the distributed development model, but lots of other factors.

A

Openness, transparency and collaboration have time and time again proven to be the only way to deal with global scale challenges.

A

But when it comes to open source communities, it feels like we have only just scratched the surface of who could be involved.

A

There is so much more potential for open source for a new generation, a globally diverse community.

A

This reality is at our fingertips, but we need to make it happen now back in may, the jenkins project recorded its highest number of contributors ever and that was in a pandemic.

A

This was in part thanks to a hackfest which saw contributors from around the world, and it was there that I met zainab abubakar from nigeria.

A

Now zainab went on to get the ghoul season of dark sort for the jenkins project and she is an amazing person, passionate about open source and community and has agreed to come and share that story with us.

A

Let's hear now from zainab.

C

Hello, I'm zainab bakar. I work at interswitch group. Nigeria interest rate is a fintech company specialized in building financial solutions across africa. Aside, my eight to five at interswitch, I'm also the open source programs manager for sheep with africa. A non-profit organization focused on empowering young women in tech across africa and aside that, I'm also a technical writer with jenkins for the google season of docs program.

C

While I can't really go outside because of the noise and all that this is the streets of lagos, this is.

C

This is what it looks like, so um I don't have a cat like kristen, but I have a dog hair. I have a dog, my my darling. His name is bailey.

C

I first heard about. uh I first heard about um jenkins cicd in 2017 when I joined in the switch well, I was confessed. I was a bit scared at first, because this was something that was totally new to me, but when I started um understanding what this tool about what this tool rather is about and what it does, I started getting more interest in ci cd, so um I'm a software engineer and my job was not to understand- was not to really understand how to set up jenkins on a server how to install jenkins.

C

It was majorly just how to use it. Sometime last year, um intel street introduced spin account and- and this just made it better, they took the automation to another level. One of the things that motivates me daily. That that keeps me on my toes that wants me to do more for jenkins is what um is the amount of support the amount of you know.

C

I don't know how to put it. The amount of support- let me just put the amount of support I get from jenkins community. I keep saying this anywhere. I have the opportunity to um talk or like the community was so welcoming.

C

I was scared because, yes, I had used jenkins, as I said, but I I didn't really understand the core of jenkins, but I wanted to. I wanted to understand that I was ready to understand that, and the community was also ready to put me through. So it's very important that you have that open source communities are closing it and they are ready to um put in the work also to help um contributors that are new, so she called africa's vision is to empower women in tech across africa and from where I grew up.

C

I grew up in the northern part of nigeria and in this part of nigeria we have a lot of females who um their lives are basically decided for them right from when they are born, like their husband is already picked for them, who they get married to once they're done with probably secondary school is already picked for them. So I I was opportuned actually to finish my education, because my parents were leonard, but I saw a lot of these.

C

Ladies every day I actually have some of them women who were my friends in secondary school but were not able to think either because their parents had decided or one thing or the other, and though this had always been in me, but it was one of my goals that whenever I can, I want to be able to empower women in nigeria.

C

So what we've been able to organize um webinars, open source challenge, to encourage more women in africa to get into technology and also to get into open source contribution? We actually had um a lady called ruth. She made her first open source contribution during one of our um webinars, where we had a practical session to getting started with open source, submitting your first request. She actually submitted her first pull request during the webinar and stopped in the subsequent months.

C

The following month, we held the challenge where she was able to record 10 open source contribution in just that month and since then she has attended events. She has spoken at events written um articles on contributing to open source, and this is what she called africa is about. Empowering women motivating women to do more. There are some, ladies out there who want to actually do these things, but because they've not gotten the right opportunity or the motivation to do it.

C

That's why they've not started or they've not gotten to where they want to be, and that is what she called africa intends to do.

C

I think a lot of people think that contributing to open source is all about giving, but it's not it's give and take you give to the community and you get as much as you give, if not even more, because I think I've gained more than I've actually been able to give to most of these communities.

C

uh I gained skills. You know, networks, I'm able to meet new people, so um I think I'll, just I'll just encourage um other people out there to get more into open source and encourage the communities also to be welcoming and be ready to, accept and um help these new contributors and put them through.

C

Thank you very much for listening. You can reach out to me on twitter and see codes and enjoy the rest of conference.

A

Thank you so much zainab that is super inspiring and I'm so glad to be part of an inclusive community, one that welcomes cat lovers and dog lovers alike.

A

Now zainab for me, embodies that powerful intersection of continuous delivery, open source and community, and to me that is the future, and it's simply a winning combination, come join us building that future. Thank you. So much.