Groundbreaking book outlines how to automate the software delivery process to release software rapidly and reliably

LONDON, Aug, 10, 2011 – ThoughtWorks, Inc. (www.thoughtworks.com) a global leader in enterprise Agile development services, today announced that Jez Humble’s book, Continuous Delivery, has been selected by Oxford University as the set text for its “Agile Practices in Engineering” course curriculum. Released in 2010, Continuous Delivery is recognised as one of the most important software development books to be published during the past year as enterprises work to extend the benefits of Lean and Agile methods beyond small teams and through the entire development and delivery lifecycle.




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“For students to be successful in the software industry, they need to understand how practices such as automated testing, continuous integration, configuration management and the deployment pipeline – as well as effective collaboration between everybody involved in the delivery process – are integral to the ability of teams to continuously deliver high quality, working software,” said Humble, a principal at ThoughtWorks Studios. “Leading institutions like Oxford University are now offering courses on Agile engineering practices and it’s great to see Continuous Delivery forming a component of this course.”

Continuous Delivery, (Addison- Wesley Signature Series, Foreword by Martin Fowler, co-authors Jez Humble and David Farley), explains how delivering software to users can be a painful, risky and time-consuming process. It outlines the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality through the automation of the build, deployment and testing process. The book represents the culmination and collective experience gathered from large-scale enterprise Agile engagements conducted by ThoughtWorks’ professional services teams. That same input helped shape the capabilities of Go™, the Agile release management platform that enables Continuous Delivery. To review or order Continuous Delivery please visit: (www.informit.com/title/0321601912). For a free trial of Go, please visit: (http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/user/register&%20destination=%20forms/form/go/download).

The “Agile Practices in Engineering” course at Oxford University presents practical techniques for building software in an Agile environment. It aims to minimise the time between the conception of an idea and its implementation in working software released to users. It embraces the changes thrown at development and IT organisations by a continually changing market, and outlines how to mitigate the associated risks by using technical practices to ensure quality of software and of the processes used to develop it.

At the end of the course, students will have an understanding of and practical experience in the techniques used to support building software in an Agile environment. For more information please visit: http://www.softeng.ox.ac.uk/subjects/APE.html