What Continuous Delivery Tools do you need?

Continuous delivery vastly improves the organization of your projects. It allows your solution to be ready for release at any time, and stay up to date with market changes.

It also encourages coordination between teams. Each team needs to be ready for their respective handover, to keep the production moving. 

Every business needs tools to facilitate the smooth running of the workforce. However, for developers, these tools are a little different and often the challenge is really about having the right processes and roles, not just the right tools.  

There are extensive lists available to discuss the best tools for the collaboration of your development teams. However, these programmes and applications can’t solve underlying organizational challenges. 

Consider whether tools are the solution to your problem, or whether you need to delve deeper into how your teams are organised. 

Challenges

Continuous delivery is only worthwhile if it limits delays and smoothens your development process. However, as teams continue to grow, more challenges can arise throughout your delivery process. 

Communication between teams is a key component of successful continuous delivery. Unfortunately, this isn’t always easy to maintain. As developers work in teams, it is easy for them to become isolated from each other. 

This can also be an issue when hiring freelancers, through nearshoring or offshoring. It is often challenging to introduce them to internal processes quickly. Communication is key to this, but language and time barriers can get in the way.

Continuous delivery can also give way to over-automation. Automated processes are relied on by developers. New tasks are automated straight away, to improve efficiency. Unfortunately, over automation can allow the quality of your development to drop. 

As such, testing phases can become flawed. They are sometimes outdated, or not suitable to the relative application. When left unchecked, this can cause bottlenecks in delivery. Issues that could have been resolved at the testing stage, must be revisited. 

Faster deadlines due to continuous delivery can also result in security issues. Often, it can be easy to let good security hygiene fall by the wayside. Passwords and authentication aren’t prioritized, leading to security issues across the project. 

However, these challenges can be overcome by instilling simple core processes. These changes can be made without the help of external tools, but by re-assessing your procedures.

Improved Processes

Your development process should be clearly defined, for each step. This makes it much easier to keep track of the development, and its progress. Track each change, and ensure that new developments pass through each necessary stage, before delivery. Furthermore, it is important to build a fresh plan before each new project.

It is also much easier to develop in smaller stages. You may wish to make minor updates or changes every day, or every other day. Either way, smaller stages provide better quality assurance. Testing and quality checks are carried out on smaller segments, avoiding high-risk mistakes.

Consider creating templates for repeated steps of the development process. These should be clearly defined, and accessible to the workforce. Regular quality checks should ensure that these are followed strictly. Templates are also ideal for the onboarding of freelance or outsourced developers. They provide a clear methodology for your in-house processes, to those that may be unfamiliar.

Partnerships

Outsourcing doesn’t just take the form of nearshore or offshore hiring. Ideally, your partner should work with you for the success of your development. 

A health tech development partner can help with process issues. They typically have their own internal processes which they have invested heavily in to create. This alleviates the pressure of freelance training for your processes. 

At the same time, heath tech development partners don’t just have developers. They have business analyst, project managers, DevOps, developers and more. This enables them to fully integrate with your teams and creates a true partnership. 

This partnership model stands in contrast to many outsourced and free lance which can be very transactional. The contractual obligations are fulfilled, but little else. 

When considering a partnership, it is important to focus on the working relationship. A real partnership can provide support and innovation for development companies. 

Find a partner that suits your niche within the development space. They may have access to expertise that isn’t within your development teams. They should supplement the spaces within your workforce, rather than work against them.

A positive development relationship can push your development forward on time, and ensure quality and success within your market.

Roles

Within health tech development, there are necessary roles and responsibilities. However, it can be challenging to focus on more external roles, when developers are in such short supply. 

A development partner can fill in gaps within your team, and provide new insights from other experienced job roles. 

For example, an external partner should have project managers, business analysts, UX experts and more. Each of these roles can provide supplementary support to your development. 

Business analysts can help to contextualize your development within your market. They have extensive experience within your space, and can provide advice on how to succeed. It is important to understand your market, to ensure that your users and buyers will understand your solution. 

User experience experts can guide the appearance of your solution, whilst you focus on the functionality. In the health market, compliance experts are key. 

Your development partner can offer all of these roles, and more. Ensure that your partnership can facilitate your development and make improvements for launch.

Tools for CD

There are tools that can help you to keep your continuous delivery stream running smoothly. Whilst there are comprehensive lists available, here are just a few of the most popular CD tools.

• Jenkins: Jenkins is an open-source automation server. It can automate all parts of your workflow, including the building and deployment of your development. Jenkins can support your continuous delivery by automating the handover through building, to testing to delivery.

• GitHub: Github is a tool for collaboration. Developers can submit versions, and receive responses from quality checks and testing. This is a platform used to control versions and allows teams to work on projects together, anywhere.

• JIRA: JIRA is a development platform for issue tracking. The software provides bug tracking, and supports agile project management. This is ideal for the automation of testing and quality checks.

• Fisheye: Fisheye is particularly useful for tracking and visualizing code changes. This is particularly important if work is completed in small stages. You can compare code simultaneously

However, the best tools in the world won’t fix process problems or issues with cheap outsourcing companies or freelancers.

At Vertrical, we build lasting partnerships with health tech development companies. We supplement your build with compliance experts, UX experts and more. Contact us today to discuss how we can drive your health tech development forward.