Progressive Delivery

Merry Meet: Monktoberfest and Book Launch Don't let anyone tell you creative collaboration requires co-presence. Last week was the first time in at least 7 years that all four Progressive Delivery authors were in the same place at the same time. In that time, we identified a pattern happening in the world, named it, honed our understanding, and wrote a whole book about it. The Progressive Delivery book releases in just under a month (

Here are some of the things we learned during this project, about each other and about making a book.

A white woman wearing a purple shirt and blue jeans, presenting at a tech conference

Sarah Hines is up. It's been 8 years since she last presented at monktoberfest, an all time classic talk. She is presenting on resilience today. This talk is excellent. Rehearse Recovery, not panic.

Celebrate boring deploys. Amen.

YouTube video by IT Revolution Progressive Delivery Audiobook Sample

If you have trouble sitting down to read work-related books, may I suggest audiobooks?

Here's a sample of the upcoming Progressive Delivery book.

youtu.be/nCySyDppqLU?...

Pre-order here: progressivedelivery.com/pre-order-pr...

DORA and Progressive Delivery The DORA 2025 report covers the second year of the AI revolution, and what it means for organizational transformation. This post is the Progressive Delivery take-aways.

DORA and Progressive Delivery

The DORA 2025 report covers the second year of the AI revolution, and what it means for organizational transformation. This post is the Progressive Delivery take-aways.

Progressive Delivery starts with abundance In a pervasive software world, the problem for both companies and users is not a lack of data, it’s a lack of metadata handles that allow us to manipulate the data in a useful and usable way.

Progressive Delivery starts with abundance

In a pervasive software world, the problem for both companies and users is not a lack of data, it’s a lack of metadata handles that allow us to manipulate the data in a useful and usable way.

The books are real! Advance copies of the Progressive Delivery book have arrived, and they smell like the start of school and learning cool new stuff.

The books are real!

Advance copies of the Progressive Delivery book have arrived, and they smell like the start of school and learning cool new stuff.

Acquiring the User Adoption Cycle: How OpenAI Plans to Reduce Technical Jerk with Statsig Photo by Anthony DeRosa on Pexels.com A theme keeps coming up in our conversations with engineering leaders lately. They describe their process for deploying new LLMs and it sounds like how we used to treat monolith releases ten years ago, and it's terrifying. This invokes a feeling of moving at incredible speed but without the right guardrails. And so it was no surprise when OpenAI acquired Statsig–It wasn't just another acquisition, it was a profound signal.

Acquiring the User Adoption Cycle: How OpenAI Plans to Reduce Technical Jerk with Statsig

Photo by Anthony DeRosa on Pexels.com A theme keeps coming up in our conversations with engineering leaders lately. They describe their process for deploying new LLMs and it sounds like how we used to treat…

Book signing at ETLS! For the first time since we started writing this book, all four authors will be in the same place at once! We're doing a talk and a book launch at Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit in Las Vegas in September. Get your tickets now for the conference Heidi has always referred to as "what happens when DevOps meets compliance and grows up".

Join us for a new talk on Progressive Delivery September 23 at the ETLS conference!

What can’t be automated? We can’t automate what we don’t understand. Doing something manually is always an essential part of automating a process, and sometimes it’s hard for us to see all the parts and elements of a process that we want to automate. 

What can’t be automated?

We can’t automate what we don’t understand. Doing something manually is always an essential part of automating a process, and sometimes it’s hard for us to see all the parts and elements of a process that we want to automate. 

Semantic Versioning and SaaS

So, Semantic Versioning is absolutely important when delivering a library that others rely on.

It is downright unimportant when we are operating a SaaS product. Which version number is deployed does not matter.

Automation is a part of Progressive Delivery Progressive delivery tends to assume that you’re doing continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment. We have automated all the mechanical parts of being a release manager, leaving only the residual and not-at-all difficult emotional labor parts. 

The best automation is not just a reproduction of human effort, only harder and faster. Instead it is like the water, or the slime mold, a better solution that is not how humans work.

Your team deploys multiple times daily with perfect feature flags, but users still revolt after releases. You've mastered deployment while ignoring adoption—and that's where real business value lives.

Read more: buff.ly/7lzV6PC

The Value of Progressive Delivery Progressive delivery doesn't take the place of Agile, DevOps, or Continuous Delivery. Rather it builds on those. It's a holistic approach that asks you to continue breaking down silos, and incorporating those lessons with this new point of view. 

The Value of Progressive Delivery

Progressive delivery doesn't take the place of Agile, DevOps, or Continuous Delivery. Rather it builds on those. It's a holistic approach that asks you to continue breaking down silos, and incorporating those lessons with this new point of view. 

Say hello to Elliott!

A hermit crab is the perfect mascot for Progressive Delivery, because change is inevitable.

We love seeing stories like this. Start small, focus on your users, and listen to both the qualitative and quantitative feedback.

"Progressive Delivery brings the art of responsibly shipping early and often into the daylight. It reframes delivering value via software in a world swimming in dreck. Software serves people, not the other way around & Progressive Delivery maps out how." -- Kent Beck, Author of Test-Driven Delivery

We were thrilled to get a quote from @kentbeck.com on our upcoming #ProgressiveDelivery book. itrevolution.com/product/prog...

We on the Progressive Delivery team agree! Zero-sum thinking makes it very hard to create magic - the best you can do is meet expectations. Sharing and working in concert gives you the potential for something greater than that.

Heidi recently chatted with @rachelchalmers.bsky.social of generationship.ai about Progressive Delivery, AI, and user optionality.

And Robin Wall Kimmerer, as you do when you're a couple technologists discussing technology.

www.heavybit.com/library/podc...

@samlambert.com was extremely helpful recently when I needed his help for a case study for our book on Progressive Delivery, which comes out in November. Just re-reading his quotes. So good. Thanks Sam! 👍🏻

Jerks are real, we’re here to help.

Ever wonder why your latest feature update sparked user complaints instead of celebration?

You might be creating "technological jerk" – a term from the upcoming book Progressive Delivery that describes what happens when software changes faster than users can mentally adapt.

buff.ly/tEwtasr

Pavel's cooking here. The people experiencing the software are a crucial part of the software lifecycle, and how we measure their experience changes what we are making.

bsky.app/profile/spav...

#ProgressiveDelivery

There is a bottle of vermouth “Vermut Lustau” and a glass with said vermouth, ice and some soda water sitting on a faded wooden table. In the background is a stone wall just an inch or so shorter than the table with a raised garden bed behind it filled mostly with weeds and a small blueberry bush. Behind the bush is another stone wall. The vermouth is quite delicious and has a complex and fragrant aroma of wormwood, gentian, coriander and orange peel. Highly recommend.

7 years ago I opened this bottle of vermouth with @monkchips.com in this backyard and he said name “Progressive Delivery,” for the first time.

Today we (along with co-authors @kimmykimkimber.bsky.social & @wiredferret.bsky.social ) are sending out the draft of our book with the same name.

Cheers🥂

Software updates don't have to be painful. Progressive Delivery means getting the right features to the right users at the right time.

Learn how leading companies are making this transformation: https://buff.ly/3Q5Uoni

A book cover with a graphic of orange ripples or half circles radiating from the spine and getting paler further from the center. The title is Progressive Delivery. The subtitle is broken up onto separate rings: Build The Right Thing | For The Right People | At The Right Time. The authors are James Governor, Kim Harrison, Heidi Waterhouse & Adam Zimman.

What is #ProgressiveDelivery?

It's getting the right thing
to the right people
at the right time.

I'm part of a team that has written a book on how to do it, who is already doing it, and how you can add it to your process.

Here's the cover!