Continuous Delivery in the Wild

Continuous Delivery in the Wild by Pete Hodgson takes you behind the scenes of real-world organizations using Continuous Delivery (CD) to accelerate software deployment while maintaining high-quality standards. This book provides practical insights from a wide range of companies, from startups to large enterprises, showcasing how they handle branch strategies, code reviews, and deployment processes.

Hodgson dives into key practices like GitHub Flow, Trunk-Based Development, and feature flagging, all while stressing the importance of minimizing batch sizes to reduce integration pain and speed up releases. The book also emphasizes the critical role of automated CI/CD pipelines, the shift away from long-lived branches, and the need for strong testing strategies in integrated systems.

A central theme throughout is the empowerment of engineers through self-service deployment platforms, which promote autonomy and accountability. Hodgson categorizes organizations into two modes—Branch-Based and Trunk-Based Continuous Delivery—and highlights how smaller, modular systems allow for faster, independent deployments.Ultimately, Continuous Delivery in the Wild shows how CD can serve as a powerful competitive advantage, driving both engineering efficiency and business success.