The Benefits of Continuous Delivery Deployment at Sportsbet

Through most of history the production process has been set in stone. You design something, you make it, you sell it. If it breaks, you repair it or replace it.

Then things turned digital.

Digital software and solutions can be updated and enhanced on the fly. Software as a service (SaaS) sees product purchases being traded for subscriptions, with the user enjoying a product that constantly evolves and enhances. And key to this evolution is the concept of continuous delivery, which is something that we at Sportsbet are incredibly passionate about.

What is continuous delivery and deployment?

Continuous delivery is the ability to get changes of all types—updates, new features, bug fixes and all manner of other things—into production, and thus into the hands of customers and users, safely, quickly, and in a sustainable way.

The process features shorter feedback loops, enabling a software provider like Sportsbet to deliver immediate customer experience improvement. The more frequently code is released, the more opportunities our product teams have to gather feedback. Data is gathered much faster, insights can also be drawn from that data much faster, and all this allows us to refine and innovate.

The benefits of continuous delivery include:

• Feedback from the end user or customer is received regularly.
• Smaller and more frequent iteration minimises risk (issues tend to be smaller and more easily fixed.)
• With their voices heard and the software regularly improved, customer satisfaction is far higher.
• The release cycle is faster and more agile.
• There are increased levels of team transparency and accountability.
• Maintenance and updates are made far easier.
   

How to establish continuous delivery deployment.

Establishing continuous delivery deployment demands not only a shift in process, but a shift in mindset. Nevertheless, it is a process that is well worth investing in, and that is less overwhelming when broken down into bite-sized pieces.

• It begins with culture: Continuous delivery can’t simply be a strategy – it must be part of your organisational mindset. Your team must understand the need for it, and if they do, they’ll likely be excited by the opportunities it presents.
• Continuous Integration of code base: There’s no transformation without integration. Successful continuous delivery is built on a base of integration, and it’s vital that you continually work to tie your systems together.
• Test, test, test: Feedback is critical to continuous development, as it will guide the next step. Test coverage (at Sportsbet we aim for 80%), automation, and production post-deployment.
• Monitor, monitor, monitor: Production system dashboards can be incredibly helpful in tracking the progress of your continuous delivery.

Finally, you should ensure that you are working and testing real-time:

• Create a checklist of your testing activities.
• Define the scope and requirements of your test coverage.
• Leverage test automation.
• Set up a testing or sandbox environment which can simulate real-time data, to test end-to-end user flow and all the critical part of your applications. There are many ways you can do this, including a dark (non-user facing) deployment, in which you can replicate the behaviours you see from real users.
   

Continuous delivery deployment at Sportsbet

At Sportsbet we live and breathe continuous deployment. One of our values is ‘the customer first and last’, which ensures that we look at everything from the customer’s perspective before making a decision. We ask ourselves ‘how can we put a smile on our customers’ faces?’ We look at what we want to achieve for our customers, then we explore ways to meet our objectives.

Sportsbet invests in its team and technology to make all this happen. The company encourages its team members to go above and beyond and to try new things. There is no failure in Sportsbet, but a concept of ‘reflect, learn and improve’.

I love Sportsbet’s flexible and people-focused culture – it allows me to manage my work life around my family life, and the balance I enjoy is fantastic. Our diverse team trusts each other, supports one another, collaborates well together, and has the necessary autonomy to solve problems quickly. I feel like this culture plays a key role in our quest for continuous delivery deployment, and that it leads to my team members and I continuously developing too.