Book Review: Grokking Continuous Delivery

By egoebelbecker

You’ve probably heard of continuous delivery (CD.) You may even work for an organization that uses it. But do you really understood what it means? Do you know what it takes to get it up and running and what benefits you’ll reap when you get it right?

Christie Wilson’s Grokking Continuous Delivery addresses all this and more. It’s a comprehensive book that starts with a definition and takes you all the way through implementing a continuous delivery pipeline. But, Grokking Continuous Delivery doesn’t merely tell you how to connect systems together to build a delivery pipeline. It explains all the fundamentals, especially the importance of using version control, effective tests, and good build systems, to ensure your software is ready for delivery and get it in front of clients as soonas possible.

Wilson’s writing is friendly and engaging and, speaking as a fellow writer, makes me a little jealous. It’s not easy to make a book about technology genuinely fun to read, but Grokking Continuous Delivery is one of those books. It walks the line between being remarkably accessible while not talking down to the reader. Reading the book feels like sitting down for a cup of coffee and talking about software delivery problems and how to solve them. Each chapter includes a story with characters that are struggling with real world problems. The problems illustrate the material and keep you invested in the topics at hand.

For example, the first pipeline example is a popular website that serves up cat pictures to its users.

Here’s a good example of the illustrations in Grokking Continuous Delivery.

The graphics are easy to see and read, even on a small e-reader. They’re also drawn in an interesting and approachable style.

The book eschews talking about specific tools as it takes you through creating a delivery pipeline, using sample code snippets and generalized concepts you can apply to any CD system setup you encounter or decide to build. But there’s an appendix with a complete lsiting of different CD tools to get you started if you’re not already using one.

Anyone involved in software development, delivery, and support would benefit from reading Grokking Continuous Delivery, regardless of their experience level. Even though it starts from basic principles, there’s something for even the most grizzled veteran to learn.

Note: I received a preview copy of Grokking Continuous Delivery so I could write this review, but the review is entirely my opinion.

As a matter of fact, Manning has given me a few discount codes for readers that want to check out Continuous Delivery or any other of their renowned technical titles.

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Here’s how to redeem single-use coupon codes:

  1. If you don’t have a Manning account, create one. All orders MUST include a valid email address.
  2. Go to Continuous Delivery’s product page
  3. Select “eBook: pdf + ePub + kindle + liveBook.”
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