How long does it take for one line of code to reach production?

Matija Frandolić · Tacta

How long until one line of code reaches production?

~30 min

How long until a whole feature reaches production?

few days?

few weeks?

How many steps?

What we learned

  1. Delivery is mostly people, not the pipeline.
  2. Keep it simple, and automate what you can.
  3. Make time for small improvements. It pays off.

1

Delivery is mostly people, not the pipeline

Where does the time go?

The busier someone is, the longer you wait

5 apps, 20 builds, 3 build agents

What can we do about it?

AI speeds up one step

What can we actually change?

There is always something to improve.

1 · Delivery is mostly people

What worked, what didn't

worked

  • a live AWS environment per developer
  • developing on masked production data

didn't work (well)

  • two prod masters, rotated every sprint

2

Keep it simple, and automate what you can

There's only so much room in your head

Every step you have to remember takes room from the real work.

Simple and automated works best.

Anything that relies on discipline alone eventually stops happening.

2 · Keep it simple, and automate what you can

What worked, what didn't

worked

  • Terraform biggest win
  • a status dashboard for all services

didn't work (well)

  • deploying to production by hand
  • Slack alerts for production errors
  • flaky e2e tests blocking every PR

3

Make time for small improvements

Start with what annoys you

Every two weeks: what annoyed you?

  • nobody updates dependencies → Dependabot opens PRs
  • flaky e2e tests nobody trusts → made them less flaky
  • debugging on test environments is painful → remote debugging + a guide

“We don't have time to fix it.”

You're already spending that time, just a little every week.

Is it worth the time?

xkcd.com/1205

3 · Make time for small improvements

What worked

  • the biweekly improvement meetings
  • specialized internal tools and dashboards

What we learned

  1. Delivery is mostly people, not the pipeline.
  2. Keep it simple, and automate what you can.
  3. Make time for small improvements. It pays off.

my bet
Teams that keep improving are faster and adapt more easily, and they'll get the most out of AI.

How long does it take for one line of code to reach production?

And how many steps?

And what can we do about it?

Your turn

  • What's your worst story of a small change taking forever?
  • Has AI made your team deliver faster, or just write code faster?
  • What's one improvement that paid off more than expected?