I think some organizations need it more than others. And I'm sure there's a lot of chasing the cool new thing. But I'd argue that almost every organization can benefit from continuous deployment and the discipline it requires.
The first time I switched from CI to full CD was circa 2011. I loved it because the mental bucket "later" went away. Except to the extent something was declared as a formal experiment in our A/B tests, code was either live or it wasn't. We were doing pair programming and committing every few hours, so aside from the little scratch-paper to-do list before we committed, there was no "later" for us. It made it real clear what our "good enough to ship" standards were. There was less room for bullshit. The resulting code was tighter, cleaner.
It also forced us to work much more closely as a team. We couldn't leave product questions for some end-of-iteration review. We had more mini-reviews with the product manager, and also improved our product judgment. Everybody trusted each other more. Partly because we had to, and partly because close collaboration is how you build trust.
It also shifted incentives further upstream. Suddenly there were no more big releases. No matter how big your vision, you had to learn to think of it in bite-sized pieces. It became less about answers, and more about questions. Not "Users need X!" but "What's the smallest thing we can do to see if users benefit from X?" Being able to make a lot of small bets made it easier to explore.
The Lean and Kanban folks talk a lot about "minimum WIP", where WIP is work in process. My CD experiences have definitely convinced me that they're right. Smaller pieces deployed more frequently requires a fair bit of discipline, but there are such huge gains in effectiveness and organizational sanity that I'll always try to work that way if I can.
The first time I switched from CI to full CD was circa 2011. I loved it because the mental bucket "later" went away. Except to the extent something was declared as a formal experiment in our A/B tests, code was either live or it wasn't. We were doing pair programming and committing every few hours, so aside from the little scratch-paper to-do list before we committed, there was no "later" for us. It made it real clear what our "good enough to ship" standards were. There was less room for bullshit. The resulting code was tighter, cleaner.
It also forced us to work much more closely as a team. We couldn't leave product questions for some end-of-iteration review. We had more mini-reviews with the product manager, and also improved our product judgment. Everybody trusted each other more. Partly because we had to, and partly because close collaboration is how you build trust.
It also shifted incentives further upstream. Suddenly there were no more big releases. No matter how big your vision, you had to learn to think of it in bite-sized pieces. It became less about answers, and more about questions. Not "Users need X!" but "What's the smallest thing we can do to see if users benefit from X?" Being able to make a lot of small bets made it easier to explore.
The Lean and Kanban folks talk a lot about "minimum WIP", where WIP is work in process. My CD experiences have definitely convinced me that they're right. Smaller pieces deployed more frequently requires a fair bit of discipline, but there are such huge gains in effectiveness and organizational sanity that I'll always try to work that way if I can.