Book Review: Continuous Integration

During the last squeezed reader awards, Burke Cox (CEO of Stelligent) was very kind and sent me a signed copy of Paul Duvall’s new book – Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk.

I was really looking forward to this book for two reasons. First, the topic was right up my alley and was very excited to what I could learn. Second, I wondered – what the heck could you talk about at a books length on this subject?

Chapter List

1. Getting Started
2. Introducing Continuous Integration
3. Reducing Risks Using CI
4. Building Software at Every Change
5. Continuous Database Integration
6. Continuous Testing
7. Continuous Inspection
8. Continuous Deployment
9. Continuous Feedback
10. The Future of CI

The Good

• Good book about explaining all the different aspects of the lifecycle that you can apply CI
• Written to be easily digested much like Pragmatic Programmer series books
• Introduced new ways for CI to be used socially

The Bad

• Not brief enough which carried unnecessary conversation
• The core messages became repetitive quickly
• Book direction seemed to bounce around and never felt as if I was being lead through the application of CI in order of execution

Overall, my feelings about this book were mixed. First, I love the fact that someone finally took the initiative to write a book on this topic. On the other hand, books like Ship it! were much better at explaining this concept at the correct length – brief.

In short, all I can say is that this book has value but what you will get out of this book is completely dependent on your previous exposure to this topic. For me, I was slightly disappointed, but then again I have been doing CI for 5 years and am always very “socially aware” of software. Others who have never done CI in any fashion (technically or socially) found the book as a great new insight.

Some my find gold nuggets in it, others may find it old news, but at least give it a good thumb through and decide for yourself.

Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk

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