What to Look For in Software Delivery Automation Tools

Software delivery automation tools can accelerate and improve the deployment process. DevOps engineers know that quickly delivering high-quality software to customers is critical to maintaining their company’s competitive advantage. Yet, enterprises often need help with implementing modern software delivery practices.  

The market offers many software delivery automation products, each with different features. Choosing the right solution is critical to your ability to deliver a faster time to value for customers. Let’s explore software delivery automation and the tools and features that can enable you to continuously deliver the most up-to-date software. 

What is Software Delivery Automation? 

Software delivery automation is the ability to move your software projects between testing and deployment through the use of automation. It also automates the deployment of changes, getting them into production as quickly as possible. Immediately getting changes to customers grants them access to the best product possible. 

Both developers and business executives benefit from delivery automation software for several reasons. Delivery automation enables increased innovation by connecting and automating tools across various teams, including development, operations, and shared services. It can facilitate the sharing of best practices, allowing for shared knowledge across teams and fewer software failures. It also improves developer productivity by eliminating repetitive tasks. 

Features to Look for in Delivery Automation Software 

Software delivery automation platforms solve multiple challenges through their features. To maximize DevOps efficiencies, you’ll want to choose a platform that connects silos, simplifies processes, automates software development, automates the delivery life cycle, scales your SDLC, releases every change, and improves the developer experience. 

The most helpful software delivery automation platforms also leverage your investments in other tools and technologies. 

💻 Connect Silos 

Often, communication barriers exist between departments, creating silos. These barriers can lead to difficulties in distributing tasks to the right workers. They also inhibit the sharing of knowledge across teams, which makes innovation more difficult. A platform that enhances collaboration and breaks down silos can solve these problems. 

💻 Simplify Processes 

Another barrier to efficient software delivery is a disorganized or inefficient workflow. A software delivery automation platform with features that help establish guidelines, track results, and ensure deadlines are met can help your enterprise accelerate software delivery. Features that optimize workflow also can help you stay under budget. 

💻 Automate Software Development 

Another key feature is the automation of more repetitive tasks. This automation helps free up staff time to focus on high-value tasks, such as developing new features. The automation can prioritize which tests to run, quickly test code changes and provide feedback continuously. Real- time insights can dramatically accelerate software development. 

💻 Automate Delivery Lifecycle 

Another desirable delivery automation platform feature is the ability to deploy, verify, and roll back software continuously at every development stage. When developers no longer need to worry about CI/CD, they can focus on building new features and coding into the software. 

💻 Scale Your SDLC 

Your software development life cycle comprises all the phases from inception to product retirement. A manual SDLC is difficult to scale. However, automating the software delivery process adds velocity to the development phases. It keeps the project within budget and seamlessly automates security controls. A software delivery automation platform that helps you scale your SDLC is essential to a growing enterprise. 

💻 Release Every Change 

A platform with a continuous delivery feature will automatically release each new configuration, feature, bug fix, or experiment. It also ensures every code change is immediately available to users once it has been validated. Essentially, CD maintains your code in a deployable state at all times. 

💻 Improve Developer Experience 

Developers got into the software business because they enjoyed writing code and developing features. Most don’t enjoy repetitive testing tasks. Nor do they relish the idea of changing code in an environment without adequate testing or security. The right software delivery automation program will include features to allow developers to focus on what they like and do best rather than doing repetitive tests. It also provides a safe environment for experimenting because developers know the platform will automatically test their changes. 

Learn How Armory Can Empower Your Delivery Automation 

Software delivery automation is critical for providing customers with updated software quickly and continuously. It is also essential to improving your developer’s experience, increasing collaboration and creativity among teams, and scaling your software development business. It can help keep your development projects on time and under budget. 

Armory provides several CI/CD solutions that automate and accelerate software development. It allows you to leverage many automation tools you already have while providing a powerful new solution. More than 12,000 developers from companies of all sizes trust our software delivery automation solutions. 

Discover how Armory can empower your delivery automation through our suite of Continuous Deployment tools here.