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Could AI Transform Continuous Delivery Development? (thenextweb.com)

An anonymous reader quotes The Next Web: According to one study, high-performing IT units with faster software releases are twice as likely to achieve their goals in customer satisfaction, profitability, market share and productivity. Acknowledgement of this has fueled a headlong rush toward what software developers call "continuous delivery"... It's a process most technology departments aspire to but only a fraction have achieved. According to a recent survey by Evans Data, 65 percent of organizations are using continuous delivery on at least some projects, but only 28 percent are using it for all their software. Among non-SaaS companies, that proportion is just 18 percent...

So what comes next? The future of application development depends on using artificial intelligence within the continuous delivery model... We're at the precipice of a new world of AI-aided development that will kick software deployment speeds -- and therefore a company's ability to compete -- into high gear. "AI can improve the way we build current software," writes Diego Lo Giudice of Forrester Research in a recent report. "It will change the way we think about applications -- not programming step by step, but letting the system learn to do what it needs to do -- a new paradigm shift." The possibilities are limited only by our creativity and the investment organizations are willing to make.

The article was written by the head of R&D at Rainforest QA, which is already using AI to manage their crowdsourced quality assurance testing. But he ultimately predicts bigger roles for AI in continuous delivery development -- even choosing which modifications to use in A/B testing, and more systematic stress-testing.

4 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Same Old Thing by sycodon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Holy Fuck.

    Continuous integration
    Prototyping
    Incremental development
    Rapid application development
    Agile development
    Waterfall development
    Spiral development

    Now, introducing, "Continuous Delivery"...or something.

    Here is the actual model, a model that will exist for the next 1,000 years.

    1. Someone (or something) gathers requirement.
    2. They get it wrong.
    3. They develop the wrong thing that doesn't even work they way they thought it should
    4. The project leader is canned
    5. The software is implemented by an outside vendor, with all the flaws.
    6. The software operates finally after 5 years of modifications to both the software and the workflows (to match the flaws in the software).
    7. As soon as it's all running properly and everyone is trained, a new project is launched to redo it, "the right way".
    8. Goto 1

    --
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  2. Re:buzzwords by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, maybe there's something useful in TFA, but I'm not really inclined to go looking based on what was in the summary. At no point, did the person being quoted actually say anything of substance. It's just buzzword soup with a dash of new technologies thrown in. Five years ago they would have said practically the same words, but just talked about utilizing the cloud instead of AI.

    I'm also a little skeptical of any study published by a company looking to sell you what the study has just claimed to be great. That doesn't mean its a complete sham, but how hard did they look for other explanations why some companies are more successful than others?

  3. continuous delivery == constant change by petes_PoV · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This might be good for developers, but it's a nightmare for the poor, bloody, customers.

    Any professional outfit will test a new release (in-house or commercial product) thoroughly before letting it get anywhere close to an environment where their business is at stake.

    This process can take anywhere from a day or two to several months, depending on the complexity of the operation, the scope of the changes, HOW MANY (developers note: not if any) bugs are found and whether any alterations to working practices have to be introduced.

    So to have developers lob a new "release" over the wall at frequent intervals is not useful, it isn't clever, nor does it save (the users) any money or speed up their acceptance. It just costs more in integration testing, floods the change control process with "issues" and means that when you report (again, developers: not if) problems, it is virtually impossible to describe exactly which release you are referring to and even more impossible for whoever fixes the bugs to produce the same version to fix and then incorporate those fixes into whatever happens to be the latest version - that hour. Even more so when dozens of major corporate customers are ALL reporting bugs with each new version they test.

    --
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  4. Re:First post. AI is the new silver bullet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, this is an incredibly low quality article. It doesn't specify what it means by what AI should do, doesn't specify which type of AI, doesn't specify why AI should be used, etc. Junk article.

    It's basically a bullshit bingo post where someone repeats a buzzword without any knowledge of the material behind it.