In modern Software Engineering, Continuous Delivery (CD) is a development approach in which a software is iteratively developed in short cycles ensuring, for each cycle, that the new features are available to end users as soon as they are implemented and tested. CD aims at defining, building and releasing software with greater speed and frequency through the deployment pipeline resulting in three major benefits, visibility, feedback and continuous deployment respectively, enabling the software functional items to efficiently flow from development to production. In this domain, the need for evaluating the performance of the deployment pipeline emerges, since the conventional metrics available in the software engineering discipline are not suited to handle all the involved aspects. In this paper, the metrics suited for supporting CD are introduced and an integration with Modeling and Simulation (M&S) techniques is discussed, based on the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard, which could represent a valid support offering a graphical notation to easily specify the deployment pipeline steps as a standard and repeatable process. The main objective is to identify feasible perspectives in which simulation methods and principles can be exploited, thus evaluating the effectiveness of M&S to support performance analysis of a deployment pipeline, seen as a predictable process. Specifically, M&S can be seen as an enabling tool for the evaluation and comparison of different CD choices against requirements through an effective implementation of simulation techniques and virtual testing.

On the importance of simulation in enabling continuous delivery and evaluating deployment pipeline performance

Falcone, Alberto;Garro, Alfredo;
2018-01-01

Abstract

In modern Software Engineering, Continuous Delivery (CD) is a development approach in which a software is iteratively developed in short cycles ensuring, for each cycle, that the new features are available to end users as soon as they are implemented and tested. CD aims at defining, building and releasing software with greater speed and frequency through the deployment pipeline resulting in three major benefits, visibility, feedback and continuous deployment respectively, enabling the software functional items to efficiently flow from development to production. In this domain, the need for evaluating the performance of the deployment pipeline emerges, since the conventional metrics available in the software engineering discipline are not suited to handle all the involved aspects. In this paper, the metrics suited for supporting CD are introduced and an integration with Modeling and Simulation (M&S) techniques is discussed, based on the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard, which could represent a valid support offering a graphical notation to easily specify the deployment pipeline steps as a standard and repeatable process. The main objective is to identify feasible perspectives in which simulation methods and principles can be exploited, thus evaluating the effectiveness of M&S to support performance analysis of a deployment pipeline, seen as a predictable process. Specifically, M&S can be seen as an enabling tool for the evaluation and comparison of different CD choices against requirements through an effective implementation of simulation techniques and virtual testing.
2018
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN); Continuous Delivery; Modeling and Simulation; Computer Science (all)
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11770/290128
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