Category Archives: Charts

The stagnation of continuous integration and continuous delivery

I like to track CI/CD* surveys as an indication of far along organizations are doing at getting better at software: “digital transformation” where the main focus is using software to improve how you do business.

If you’re not doing CI, you’ll have a hard time getting better at doing software, or, really, doing good software at all. I

f you’re not doing CD, you won’t be able to deliver weekly so that you can get the feedback cycle in place to do hypothesis-driven development. You’ll be doing waterfall, etc.

Anyhow, here’s one chart I put together based on the State of Agile surveys:

Source: State of Agile Surveys, 3rd through 14th, VersionOne/CollabNet/digital.ai. CI/CD not tracked in 5th/2009. Over the years, definitions change, “delivery” and “deployment” are added; but, these numbers are close enough to other surveys to be useful. See more CI/CD surveys: Forrester survey (2019), DZone CD reports (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019).

The data isn’t perfect, scientific, or whatever. But it’s a good rhetorical device. Also, it matches up with other surveys on this topic (from the likes of Gartner and Forrester).

The general take is: CI has plateaued, but it’s high; CD has been slow to catch on and still has only minor growth in adoption year over year.

So, if you think you’re doing agile, there’s a good chance you’re not. Go do a walk-about and see what’s actually happening and make putting CI/CD in place a priority if you’re not doing it. Otherwise, all your other efforts to get better at software will fail and be a waste.

(* Delivery vs. deployment – I don’t know man – I don’t care…? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

(Also, as noted by Jon, if you don’t have testing in place, then start there. Also: version control. Yes, it’s worth mentioning that. You’d be shit-your-pants surprised.)

Would you buy auto insurance from Google? The Kids and auto insurance

The young people account for 20% of of the $180bn US auto insurance market. Here’s some trends in their buying behavior a la a BCG infographic:

Infographic on car insurance buying habits.

Some items:

  • That nearly 40% are willing to buy from Amazon, Google, and others should put traditional insurance vendors in full on freak out mode.
  • Once The Kids start the long (up to two weeks!) research process, they’re 70% more likely to switch than The Olds. So, it’s probably a good idea for incumbents to heavily get involved in research, pointing to native content sponsored “third parties” and providing their own research.
  • As one of our Pivotal customers, Allstate, put it: “Everybody is going to disrupt the insurance industry. It hasn’t been disrupted in eighty-plus years.”

Source: bcg.perspectives – How Digital Switchers Are Disrupting US Auto Insurers