“Release Early, Release Often” Clarified

Solid Automated End-to-End (via UI) regression testing is the enabler for “Release Early; Release Often”

This article is one of the “IT Terminology Clarified” series.

Most IT professionals have heard IT executives talking about “Release Early; Release Often” a lot, typically in company town hall meetings. However, this phrase has become an ideal slogan, which is meaningless in everyday life.

Most CIOs like the idea of “Release Early; Release Often”, but they have never experienced it. At the bottom of their hearts, they are not even sure if they really want it. This Chinese idiom(Lord Ye Loves Dragon) describes this kind of behavior very well. Without the strong determination of the CEO/CIO, the middle tier: senior VPs, managers, fake agile coaches, fake scrum masters, fake DevOps leads, and architects, would just do some fake work under the banner of “Release Early, Release Often”. For most of those people, this is just a job, and fearing change is normal.

If you are CIO/CEO and really want to achieve “Release Early; Release Often” and would like a real life case study at a large IT organization. I recommend Wired’s article: The Software Revolution Behind LinkedIn’s Gushing Profits, a good read.