Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Push To Production?

First time accepted submitter Stiletto writes "I work for a traditional 'old school' software company that is trying to move into web services, now competing with smaller, nimbler 'Web 2.0' companies. Unfortunately our release process is still stuck in the '90s. Paperwork and forms, sign-off meetings, and documentation approvals make it impossible to do even minor deployments to production faster than once a month. Major releases go out a couple of times a year. I've heard from colleagues in Bay Area companies who release weekly or daily (or even multiple times a day), allowing them to adapt quickly. Slashdotters, how often do you push software changes into production, and what best practices allow you to maintain that deployment rate without chaos?"

Comments

Gotta raise his Joel Test Scores, first

[Safety Cap]

If he can't deploy to production in one step, he needs to fix that first.

I'm not talking about from dev box to production. I'm talking about the physical act of someone running a single command (or for the Winlazy, pressing a button) then walking away. All code checkouts from source control, database changes, app server code deployments, web server restarts—whatever—happen without user intervention.

He should also be able to roll back in one step.

For all the meetings, forms, etc., it sounds like there is A LOT of CYA in that company. In that case, it is cultural and can only be changed from the top. Until/unless the company becomes less risk adverse, there is no point in trying to become more "agile" (i.e., risk-accepting) except making your job easier. Build your tools/scripts/whatever to make it easier to do stuff.

tl;dr: If you want a more nimble company, switch jobs.