Continuous Deployment is about making a decision to do things right. It is a clear goal and a proof that the changes across all levels were successful. The primary obstacle is thinking that we can get there without drastic changes in the application’s architecture, processes, and culture. Tools are the least of our problems.

I spend a significant chunk of my time helping companies improve their systems. The most challenging part of my job is going back home after an engagement knowing that the next time I visit the same company, I will discover that there was no significant improvement. I cannot say that is not partly my fault. It certainly is. I might not be very good at what I do. Or maybe I am not good at conveying the right message. Maybe my advice was wrong. There can be many reasons for those failures, and I do admit that they are probably mostly my fault. Still, I cannot shake the feeling that my failures are caused by something else. I think that the root cause is in false expectations.
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Every once in a while I get asked a variation of the same question. “Viktor, how do we create a learning culture in our company?” In most cases, my answer receives a bad reception. The short version of it is to “stop doing what you’re doing, and get out of the way.”

Engineers love learning. Most of us became engineers because we like to “play” with tech. And yet, people in many organizations complain that they are not allowed to innovate and that they don’t have time to learn. If my statement that engineers are playful kind of people, lack of innovation cannot be attributed to them, so we need to look for causes somewhere else.
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