Company
Date Published
Author
Harness Team
Word count
2108
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Change Advisory Boards (CABs) have traditionally been used in software delivery to manage risk and ensure safety, but recent studies suggest they may slow down the process without enhancing system stability. Dr. Nicole Fosgren's research indicates that external approvals from CABs negatively impact lead time and deployment frequency without reducing change failure rates. Instead, a lightweight change approval process, such as peer review combined with a deployment pipeline, is recommended for safer and more efficient software delivery. Modern approaches, like those adopted by companies such as Booking.com and Walmart Labs, utilize advanced deployment pipelines to detect and revert bad changes quickly, emphasizing the importance of progressive delivery methods. These methods, which include decoupling deploy from release and selectively exposing new code, are becoming foundational practices in achieving continuous integration and delivery. Feature flags and automated mechanisms for detecting and rejecting problematic changes represent a shift towards impact-driven software delivery, enabling teams to make more informed decisions based on real-time data analytics without the bottleneck of traditional change management processes.