Factors impacting rapid releases: an industrial case study

Abstract

Context: Software release teams try to reduce the time needed for the transit of features or bug fixes from the development environment to the production, crossing all the quality gates. However, little is known about the factors that influence the time-to-production and how they might be controlled in order to speed up the release cycles. Goal: This paper examines step by step the release process of an industrial software organization aiming to identify factors that have a significant impact on the lead time and outcomes of the software releases. Method: Over 14 months of release data have been analyzed (246 releases from the isolated source code branches to the production environment). Results: We discuss three dimensions under which a series of factors could be addressed: technical, organizational, and interactional. We present our findings in terms of implications for release process improvements. Conclusions: Our analyzes reveal that testing is the most time consuming activities (86%) along with the need for more congruence among teams, especially in the context of parallel development.