tech·nic·al·ly agile class·i·fic·at·ion

Frequent Releases: Accelerating Value Delivery Through Continuous Feedback

Delivering incremental product updates regularly to accelerate feedback loops, reduce risk, enhance collaboration, and sustain continuous improvement.

Ensuring continuous delivery of incremental improvements to users and stakeholders.

Image
https://nkdagility.com/resources/frequent-releases/

Overview

Frequent releases refer to the practice of delivering small, incremental updates to products or services on a regular basis. This approach is crucial for organisations aiming to respond swiftly to user feedback and market changes, ensuring that value is consistently delivered to stakeholders. By breaking down larger projects into manageable releases, teams can reduce the risk associated with deployment, as each release is smaller and easier to test and validate.

This practice fosters a culture of continuous improvement, allowing teams to iterate based on real-world usage and feedback. Frequent releases enable organisations to maintain a competitive edge by adapting quickly to evolving customer needs and technological advancements. The systemic nature of this approach encourages collaboration across teams, as developers, testers, and product owners work closely to refine and enhance the product continuously.

Moreover, frequent releases contribute to a sustainable development environment, where teams can maintain a steady pace without the burnout often associated with large, infrequent releases. This rhythm not only enhances team morale but also builds trust with stakeholders, as they see regular progress and tangible outcomes. By embedding frequent releases into their operational practices, organisations can create a robust framework for delivering value consistently and effectively, ensuring that they remain responsive and relevant in a fast-paced market.

Learn More about Frequent Releases

Signals

Every delay increases the risk of failure

Delaying software releases increases failure risk. Frequent, small releases improve success rates, adaptability, and recovery, as shown by CHAOS Report and DORA metrics.
Tags

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery is the practice of frequently delivering small increments of valuable product directly to real users, enabling rapid feedback, validation, and continuous improvement from the very first iteration.
Signals

Do More Staging Environments Really Reduce Deployment Risk

Adding more staging environments does not reduce deployment risk; true safety comes from automated testing, continuous integration, and quality engineering practices.
Signals

If software is not delivered, it is not valuable

Undelivered software provides no value. Frequent, iterative releases reduce risk, cost, and failure, enabling faster learning and real user impact in software development.
Signals

Velocity isn’t how many story points a team burns down

Velocity measures how quickly teams turn ideas into value, using build, test, deploy, and feedback times—not just story points—to track real delivery speed.
Signals

Frequent releases are not just a technical strategy

Frequent software releases reduce risk, enable faster feedback, and help teams adapt to user needs, preventing costly mistakes and improving overall performance.
Blog

Without Delivery, There Is No Value

Value in software is only realised through delivery. Frequent releases validate assumptions, reduce risk, and enable rapid feedback, adaptation, and continuous improvement.
Signals

Why Organisations Believe Their Software Is Too Complex for CD

Many organisations cite software complexity as a barrier to continuous delivery, but real obstacles are technical debt and lack of investment in quality and automation.
Signals

Deploying Windows OS Directly to Production: Then vs Now

Explains how Windows OS updates shifted from infrequent, risky releases to safe, staged rollouts using ring-based deployment and real-time user feedback for reliability.
Signals

Git Flow should have died years ago

Explains why Git Flow is outdated for modern software, highlighting its drawbacks and recommending simpler workflows like GitHub Flow for faster, continuous delivery.
Signals

Engineering can fix technical debt, but leadership has to invest in it

Technical debt requires leadership investment to resolve; without support for automation and quality improvements, continuous delivery is not achievable for engineering teams.
Signals

Rethinking Dev-Test-Staging-Production Pipelines for Safety

Explores why traditional Dev-Test-Staging-Production pipelines fall short and highlights audience-based deployment for safer, faster feedback in real production environments.
Blog

Testing in Production Maximises Quality and Value

Explains how audience-based deployment and testing in production enable faster feedback, safer rollouts, and higher software quality by targeting real users and reducing risk.
Blog

Stop Hiding Behind Complexity and Start Delivering Continuously

Continuous delivery is achievable for any software, regardless of complexity. Success depends on investment in automation, quality, and process improvement—not technical barriers.
Blog

Delivery is the only Measure of Progress in Scrum

Scrum teams must deliver working software to real users every Sprint; true progress is measured by delivery to production, not just by completing internal work.
Signals

Why Engineering Teams Use Staging Environments for Risk Reduction

Explores how staging environments aim to reduce risk in software development, their hidden costs, and modern alternatives like feature flags and progressive rollouts.
Videos

Transforming Agility: How Azure DevOps Went from Two-Year Releases to 880,000 Deployments

Explores how Azure DevOps shifted from slow, two-year releases to rapid, continuous delivery, highlighting the benefits of fast feedback, agility, and frequent deployments.
Videos

Maximising Deployment Frequency: The Key to Faster Time to Market and Business Success

Explores how increasing deployment frequency, stable environments, and fast feedback loops improve software delivery, reduce time to market, and align with business goals.
Videos

Unlocking Code Quality: The Transformative Power of Frequent Deployments

Explores how frequent code deployments improve code quality, reduce technical debt, enable faster feedback, and support iterative, user-focused software development.
Blog

Building a release pipeline with Release Management with Visual Studio 2013

Explains how to set up a scalable release pipeline using Release Management in Visual Studio 2013, covering continuous release, feedback environments, and DevOps practices.
Videos

Unlocking the True Power of Continuous Delivery: How Automation Transforms Software Development

Explains how automation in continuous delivery improves software reliability, reduces risk, and enables faster, safer deployments through consistent, rapid feedback loops.
Blog

Continuous value delivery with modern business applications

Explains how modern business applications use continuous delivery to release new features frequently, reduce risk, and improve customer satisfaction through rapid updates.
Videos

Unlocking Continuous Delivery: How Feature Flags Transform Software Development

Explains how feature flags enable safe, incremental software releases, support continuous delivery, and use user feedback to improve features before full rollout.
Blog

Quality enablement with Visual Studio 2012

Explores how Visual Studio 2012 supports continuous quality enablement, automated testing, and rapid delivery in modern software development for higher user satisfaction.
Signals

let-us do the maths

Explains how slow product release cycles delay feature delivery, risk losing relevance, and create competitive disadvantages, highlighting the benefits of faster iterations.
Signals

Staging Environments Do Not Prevent Production Failures

Staging environments can’t fully replicate production, often leading to false confidence. Real risk reduction comes from safe, incremental releases to actual users.
Signals

Every unreleased feature is a cost

Unreleased features create hidden costs and risks. Regular software delivery reduces failure rates, rework, and missed opportunities, ensuring real value is delivered.
Signals

There a common belief that rollback is the ultimate safety net

Rollback is often riskier than rolling forward, especially for stateful apps. Safer deployment relies on progressive delivery and fail-forward strategies, not reversals.
Signals

Too many teams overcomplicate their branching strategies

Learn why simple branching strategies like GitHub Flow and Release Flow help teams deliver faster, reduce risk, and avoid the pitfalls of complex version control.
Tags

Internal Developer Platform

An Internal Developer Platform streamlines development processes, enabling teams to build, test, and deploy applications efficiently within a controlled environment.
Signals

Branch promotion is a relic of slow, manual software delivery

Explains why modern software teams avoid branch promotion, using continuous integration, feature flags, and production-like testing to streamline delivery and reduce risk.
Blog

The Sprint is a container for Planning and not necessarily for Delivery

Explains how Scrum Sprints are primarily for planning, not fixed delivery, and discusses aligning delivery schedules, continuous deployment, and improving software quality.
Videos

Embrace Simplicity: How to Transform Complexity into Continuous Delivery Success

Explains how simplifying complex software and committing to change enables continuous delivery, highlighting the need for cultural shift, resilience, and ongoing improvement.
Blog

Release Management with Team Foundation Server 2012

Explains how to automate and streamline software release management using Team Foundation Server 2012, Lab Management, and Octopus, focusing on build, deployment, and quality.
Blog

How Usable Working Products Are Your Ultimate Weapon Against Risks

Delivering usable, working products frequently is key to reducing risk in Agile. Focus on feedback, automation, and lean practices over excessive documentation.
Blog

Live Site Culture & Site Reliability Engineering

Explores how agile teams use DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering to deliver high-quality software rapidly, with insights from Microsoft’s Azure DevOps team practices.
Videos

The Evolution of Product Management in the Agile Era

Explores how Agile transformed product management by enabling shorter release cycles, faster feedback, continuous delivery, and a stronger focus on built-in quality.
Signals

Best Branching Strategies for Development Teams Explained

Explains why environment-based branching slows development, and recommends using feature flags and progressive rollouts for simpler, faster, and safer code delivery.
Videos

Mastering Site Reliability: Insights from Azure DevOps on Building a Resilient Live Site Culture

Explore proven strategies from Azure DevOps for building resilient, reliable software systems—covering transparency, automation, telemetry, incident response, and team culture.
Signals

We don’t have time for automation—but manual testing slows releases and quality

Manual testing limits release speed and quality, while automation enables faster, more reliable software delivery by reducing regressions and tester workload.
Course

Continuous Delivery Using Azure DevOps Services Training

This two-day course provides students with the DevOps principles and related hands-on practices to work better as a team, scale their agility, share and integrate their work, and deliver working software continuously in order to enable faster delivery of value and receive early and valuable feedback.
Videos

Unlocking Unrealised Value: The Key to Elevating Your Product Development Strategy

Explains how identifying and validating unrealised value, understanding user needs, and rapid feedback loops can enhance product development and maximise user impact.

Connect with Martin Hinshelwood

If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.

Concepts


Categories


Tags

GitHub (4)
Scaling (15)
Windows (97)

Our Happy Clients​

We partner with businesses across diverse industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, engineering, transportation, hospitality, entertainment, legal, government, and military sectors.​

Deliotte Logo

Deliotte

Flowmaster (a Mentor Graphics Company) Logo

Flowmaster (a Mentor Graphics Company)

Schlumberger Logo

Schlumberger

Bistech Logo

Bistech

Sage Logo

Sage

Alignment Healthcare Logo

Alignment Healthcare

Workday Logo

Workday

Xceptor - Process and Data Automation Logo

Xceptor - Process and Data Automation

Ericson Logo

Ericson

Healthgrades Logo

Healthgrades

MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd. Logo

MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd.

Illumina Logo

Illumina

Boeing Logo

Boeing

Kongsberg Maritime Logo

Kongsberg Maritime

Jack Links Logo

Jack Links

Teleplan Logo

Teleplan

Lockheed Martin Logo

Lockheed Martin

Big Data for Humans Logo

Big Data for Humans

Washington Department of Enterprise Services Logo

Washington Department of Enterprise Services

Washington Department of Transport Logo

Washington Department of Transport

Department of Work and Pensions (UK) Logo

Department of Work and Pensions (UK)

Royal Air Force Logo

Royal Air Force

Nottingham County Council Logo

Nottingham County Council

Ghana Police Service Logo

Ghana Police Service

Capita Secure Information Solutions Ltd Logo

Capita Secure Information Solutions Ltd

Cognizant Microsoft Business Group (MBG) Logo

Cognizant Microsoft Business Group (MBG)

Big Data for Humans Logo

Big Data for Humans

Philips Logo

Philips

Slicedbread Logo

Slicedbread

DFDS Logo

DFDS