01 / Delivery & release confidence
Pina Vida
Getting completed work into use.
From roughly quarterly to weekly, sometimes more often
The situation
Pina Vida was a software development agency working on a multi-year modernisation programme for an enterprise client. The operational workflow system was more than twenty years old and had already undergone a partial rewrite. Changes were written and tested, then often shelved for months while waiting for a deployment slot sponsored by the responsible project manager. Releases happened roughly once every three months.
The decision focus
What was keeping completed work out of use, and how could the team build enough release confidence to remove that wait?
James’s involvement
Prioritising release improvements and guiding implementation with the team
The work
Each release required overnight opening of specialist facilities, security cover and overtime for engineers and testers. James prioritised understanding why on-site verification was needed and what it had to demonstrate. Working with the team, he focused on automated verification and smaller, more frequent releases, building confidence until verification could be performed entirely remotely.
The outcome
Releases became weekly, sometimes more frequent. Moving to remote verification saved several thousand pounds per release. Development also moved faster as the team spent less time on rework, repeat verification and switching between new work and older changes waiting to go live.
Based on James’s first-hand account. Release frequencies and savings are approximate retrospective figures; outcomes reflect shared team contributions over the engagement. The enterprise client is unnamed and the operating context is generalised. This work included hands-on implementation, beyond the scope of the current review offers.