Reflections on 2017

In 2017, Octopus Deploy experienced significant growth and underwent substantial internal changes to better align with its goals, including hosting a kick-off event, hiring talent from across Australia, and focusing on monthly feature releases. The company made progress on its 2017 roadmap, achieving several key milestones such as enhancing the user interface, expanding Java support, and improving deployment stability, though some planned projects like Octopus Ops and the Slack App were not completed due to resource allocation challenges. Despite facing increased competition from Microsoft's VSTS Release Management, which gained ground in Azure-heavy deployments, Octopus remained committed to refining its product for complex deployment scenarios and enhancing its cloud offerings. The year also saw a major UI overhaul from AngularJS to React, reflecting the company's readiness to invest in long-term improvements despite the high costs and effort involved. As Octopus embarked on these changes, it also recognized the need to manage ambitious projects more iteratively to avoid drifting off course, a lesson learned from the challenges faced during the year.