一句话：通过混合方法案例研究揭示快速发布对延迟、代码质量与用户感知质量的影响。
许多软件项目为更快交付新功能而采用快速发布，但其影响尚不明确。本文以大型银行公司 ING 为案例，对其自2011年转向快速发布后形成的611个快慢发布混合团队开展探索性研究。作者采用混合方法，对461名参与者进行问卷调查，并用2年代码质量数据和1年发布延迟数据进行佐证。研究发现：快速发布比非快速发布更常被延迟，但延迟时间更短；快速发布在代码评审和用户感知质量方面可能有益；快速发布的软件往往具有更高的代码变更量、更高的测试覆盖率和更低的平均复杂度；其挑战主要涉及依赖管理和设计债等代码方面。
The appeal of delivering new features faster has led many software projects to adopt rapid releases. However, it is not well understood what the effects of this practice are. This paper presents an exploratory case study of rapid releases at ING, a large banking company that develops software solutions in-house, to characterize rapid releases. Since 2011, ING has shifted to a rapid release model. This switch has resulted in a mixed environment of 611 teams releasing relatively fast and slow. We followed a mixed-methods approach in which we conducted a survey with 461 participants and corroborated their perceptions with 2 years of code quality data and 1 year of release delay data. Our research shows that: rapid releases are more commonly delayed than their non-rapid counterparts, however, rapid releases have shorter delays; rapid releases can be beneficial in terms of reviewing and user-perceived quality; rapidly released software tends to have a higher code churn, a higher test coverage and a lower average complexity; challenges in rapid releases are related to managing dependencies and certain code aspects, e.g., design debt.
@inproceedings{paperbot5170,
title = {Releasing fast and slow: an exploratory case study at ING},
author = {Elvan Kula and Ayushi Rastogi and Hennie Huijgens and Arie van Deursen and Georgios Gousios},
booktitle = {FSE},
year = {2019},
doi = {10.1145/3338906.3338978}
}