CI/CD: An Experience Report
Our Quest for the holy grail of software delivery

Presented by Leonard Vaughn and Joy Shafer, The Climate Corp

Climate has been working to achieve CI/CD with varying degrees of success for at least three years now. Although we are not “there” yet, we have made great progress toward that goal.

We’d like to share what we’ve learned:

How do we define CI/CD?
What does our process for getting there look like?
What is working for us?
What has not worked for us?
What is left for us to do? Why aren’t we “there” yet?
In this presentation, Joy and Leonard talk about the victories and setbacks, the Climate Corporation has experienced in its quest for the holy grail of software delivery.

Should your team embrace continuous delivery or bravely run away?

About our speakers:

Leonard Vaughn has been testing interesting software, from operating systems to apps, “for a long time.”

For the past 6 years, he’s been a Test Engineer with The Climate Corporation as it grew from a single-product, 100-person insurance company to the leading global digital agriculture platform. Along the way, Climate moved steadily* towards a Continuous Delivery model for their service and web stacks, and timely, frequent releases of both iOS and Android applications that today are critical to many farmers’ success.

*more like fits and starts, actually. But that’s where the story gets interesting!

Joy Shafer has been a software test professional for more than twenty years and has managed testing and testers at many diverse companies, including Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, and Quardev. She is currently a Test Engineering Manager at The Climate Corporation. Joy enjoys participating in community QA and Agile groups. She holds an MBA in International Business from Stern Graduate School of Business (NYU). For fun, she writes fiction and enjoys wilderness adventures (while drinking wine).