How COVID-19 is Impacting Software Delivery
As the global pandemic continues to impact society and our daily lives, we certainly strive to move forward and cherish what we have. At Harness, we have been aggregating data over the deployments we see on the Harness Platform.
The impact on deployments is pretty visible on metrics we have access to. Certainly, an indicator that teams are buttoning down the hatches. As change freezes and moratoriums move in, deployments will be initially on the decline.
10-15% Decline in Deployments
Looking at statistics week to week on the Harness Platform, we are noticing a 10-15% drop off in deployments in the previous week over week.
[Line in blue are successful deployment trends, incomplete for current week]
When there are challenges natural instinct is to limit change and harden what you have. Similar to a time of increased demand e.g a Black Friday or Cyber Monday event, deployment freezes and moratoriums occur. Though the recent pandemic seems more like a Black Swan event than an event we have a long lead time for.
In the United States, the last week has been significant in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic curve. As organizations and the greater public start to adjust with the new norms, for now, we can take a step back and start to plan. Organizations are certainly looking at Business Continuity Plans and making sure there is alignment with IT teams and systems. Mature organizations limit knee jerk reactions and are elevating planning exercises.
If anything, demand for IT change did not evaporate and there is certainly a build-up of changes that will need to occur. The deployments will occur and organizations are moving to innovate and make changes to service their customers in trying times. In short, the deployments will return.
Deployments will Return
After the initial surge of planning activities, organizations will adapt. A good example is the airlines in how quickly they needed to adapt. Most airlines are offering fee waivers but to implement these fee waivers requires change to billing and ticketing platforms.
If you followed the travel industry in the last few weeks, imagine all of your customers calling or electronically trying to reschedule all at once; I certainly was one of them. Current architectures were not designed for this and even implementing in what the public would consider a “simple change” transverses many systems and imagine doing this without disruption. Changes to systems are not one and done; they take a lot of iteration, testing, and potentially several deployments to maintain uptime.
Even public organizations as needs for public services increase will have to make changes to the underlying applications and infrastructure to cope with the increased demand. For example, the surge in initial unemployment claims is taxing the systems designed to handle and process the claims. Regardless of size or industry, Harness is here to partner and help reduce your deployment burden.
Harness here to Partner
The freezes will certainly end and innovation will move forward in one shape or form. As organizations adapt to changes in demand and being there for their customers in challenging times, application and infrastructure change will press forward.
Anytime you deploy you are introducing a change thus introducing risk. Having a Continuous Delivery pipeline can be very useful in systemically building confidence thus reducing risk. A steep part of the technology learning curve is a deployment as deployments can as unique as the application themselves.
The Harness Platform allows for a convention based way of deploying that a large swath of resources can pick up and run with. Check out our webinar on Business Continuity and how your Continuous Delivery pipelines can help mitigate unforeseen risk, the ability to continue to make changes. In the meantime, stay safe and to avoid going stir crazy can check out a Harness Trial / chat with us on the Harness Community.
Cheers,
-Ravi