July 2016 Summaries

In this episode of To Be Continuous, Edith Harbaugh and Paul Biggar discuss the concept of 'crunch time' in the startup world and its implications on work-life balance. They touch upon articles from Venture Beat that highlight different perspectives on crunch time - one arguing it as a bad thing while another suggesting it should be relished by passionate game developers who are expected to work 70 to 100 hours every week. The discussion also covers the issue of perpetual crunch time and how it leads to burnout, emphasizing that crunch time is best used for emergencies and should be avoided at all costs. They further discuss the importance of planning in avoiding crunch time and how continuous delivery can help manage workloads more effectively.

In this text, the author discusses their experience of co-founding LaunchDarkly, a company providing feature flags as a service. They emphasize how feature flags can help software teams iterate faster with less risk and establish it as an essential part of cloud infrastructure. The author also shares their excitement about positive customer feedback and the impact of their product on software development.

In this episode of the "To Be Continuous" podcast, Edith Harbaugh and Paul Biggar talk with Scott Raney about continuous delivery in enterprises. They discuss how big enterprises are changing their approach to software development and deployment, and how this change is affecting startups and innovation. They also touch on the concept of type one and type two decisions, and how they relate to continuous delivery. Finally, they share some real-life examples of companies that have successfully implemented continuous delivery practices.

Feature branching is a development strategy that allows developers to work on specific features in separate branches without affecting the main codebase. However, long-lived branches can lead to issues such as merge conflicts and duplicate code. By introducing feature flags, developers can manage feature releases independently of code deployments, allowing for faster and more controlled software delivery. Feature flagging enables continuous development teams to control feature rollouts separate from code deployments, mitigating risks and improving team communication. Combining short-lived branches with feature flags enhances the benefits of both strategies, making it easier to maintain and integrate new features into the main codebase.