A free short course on the concepts behind CD (Continuous Delivery). It is presented by Dave Farley. a software developer who has done pioneering work in DevOps, CD, CI, BDD, TDD and Modern Software Engineering.

He co-authored  the book "Continuous Delivery" which won the 2011 Jolt Excellence Award and more recently wrote Modern Software Engineering, which we reviewed.

Without even looking at the content, based on the author's credentials you expect top quality work. Does it live up to the standards?

Continuous Delivery Fundamentals has been designed for people who are new to Continuous Delivery who want to understand more about it.

As such it is solely theory based introducing the concepts, benefits and key practices, as well as suggesting steps on how to start your journey with Continuous Delivery.As such you don't have to write any code, there's no exercises, just talk on the concepts.

It is self-study and comprises of four video lessons accompanied by a downloadable guide to keep for future reference.

At a high level, it talks about :

• the principles and practices of Continuous Delivery
• why CD is the best way to deliver software
• the 3 phases of a Continuous Delivery Pipeline
• the 14 things you need to do to practice Continuous Delivery
• the first steps to get started with CD

The author commences by giving a clear definition to what CD is: a common language, that helps technical and non-technical people working together. It's aim is to transform the software development process in order to bring immediate value to your customers by decreasing the time taken from laying out the business requirement to releasing in production.

In the first couple of lessons a high level overview is provided during which you'll encounter terms like automation, fast feedback, repeatability, reducing cycle time, making incremental improvements etc.

In the next "14 Signs You are Practicing CD", you stat delving deeper in the process. You'll hear about Continuous Integration and its difference with Continuous Delivery, Trunk-Based Development, Fast Feedback, Automated Testing
Version Control, Observability and so on. Crucial principles in understanding how the pipeline works.

The last part has tips on starting a new project in a way that improves the chances of success and that aligns itself with
the CD philoshopy.It also offers a downloadable guide in pdf format.

In the end, after completing it, you'll have the foundation to go on to learn more about Continuous Delivery and Deployment Pipelines. It is expected that you now:

• Understand the concepts, terms and benefits of Continuous Delivery
• Can identify where you are on your journey toward Continuous Delivery, and be able to set targets that you can use to achieve CD.
• Know how to get started with Continuous Delivery.

Mastering the process of CD is crucial to modern software development and in developing critical engineering skills at scale.  This course is a good start, setting you off in the right direction.

More Information

Continuous Delivery Fundamentals
 

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