Improving the IBM Continuous Delivery Pipeline: Towards a framework of Best Practices in the Design and Adoption of Continuous Delivery tools

该项目旨在改进IBM的持续交付（CD）工具的设计，以解决客户面临的采用挑战。 CD代表了一种新的软件开发方式，也是学术研究中的一个新兴趋势。这是一个范式转变，以可重复的方式自动化构建、测试和部署软件，同时不断为客户增加价值。这些软件任务的自动化得到了各种CD工具的支持，这些工具使组织能够实施CD实践。CD为组织带来了广泛的好处，包括自动化否则昂贵和容易出错的手动任务，从客户那里获得快速反馈，始终拥有可靠的候选版本，以及简化跨组织任务。然而，CD在采用方面面临着挑战，每一个挑战都缺乏对组织最佳实践的充分理解。作为软件开发的领导者，IBM开发了一个CD工具套件（以下称为IBM的CD工具）作为其云产品的一部分。然而，该工具在扩大用户群方面遇到了问题，并且缺少在不断增长的CD工具市场中具有竞争力的功能。不幸的是，缺少的功能导致了重大的挑战，有效地部署，维护和扩展的功能集上持续的基础上，从而限制了开发新的和所需的feature.The研究项目的能力将遵循设计科学的方法，以确定IBM的CD工具功能的缺点，与这些挑战。我们将研究IBM的CD工具用户、其内部开发人员以及其他CD工具的用户所经历的采用挑战。然后，我们将在CD工具的设计和采用中开发一个最佳实践框架，这些工具可以在IBM等处实例化和操作。更具体地说，IBM将在1.）中受益于此框架。设计一个改进的IBM CD工具，以缓解当前的采用挑战; 2.）持续评估客户采用IBM CD工具的最佳实践。

This project aims to improve the design of IBM's Continuous Delivery (CD) tool to address the adoption challenges faced by its customers. CD represents a new way of developing software and a recent and rising trend in academic research. It is a paradigm shift to the automation of building, testing, and deploying software in a repeatable way while continually adding value to customers. The automation of these software tasks is supported by various CD tools, which enable organizations to implement CD practices. CD presents extensive benefits for organizations, including the automation of otherwise expensive and error-prone manual tasks, receiving quick feedback from customers, always having a reliable release candidate, and streamlining cross-organizational tasks. However, CD faces challenges in adoption, each of which lacks a full understanding of best practices for organizations. As a leader in software development, IBM developed a CD toolsuite (referred to as IBM's CD tool henceforth) as part of its Cloud offering. However, the tool is experiencing problems with expanding the user base and is missing feature to be competitive in a growing market of CD tools. Unfortunately, the missing features have led to significant challenges in effectively deploying, maintaining, and expanding the feature set on an ongoing basis, thus limiting the ability to develop new and desired features.The research project will follow a design science methodology to identify shortcomings in IBM's CD tool functionality, as related to these challenges. We will study the adoption challenges experienced by IBM's CD tool users, its internal developers, as well as users of other CD tools. We will then develop a framework of best practices in the design and adoption of CD tools that can be instantiated and acted upon at IBM, among others. More specifically IBM will benefit from this framework in 1.) the design of an improved IBM CD tool to mitigate the current set of adoption challenges and 2.) an on-going assessment of the best practices in the adoption of the IBM CD tool at its customers.