Problems and Solutions of Continuous Deployment: A Systematic Review

Context: The software industry needs to adapt itself to a rapidly changing market. Continuous practices (Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment), commonly found in Agile development processes, it is possible to deliver new features more frequently to clients, integrating of smaller features is less likely to cause conflicts than the more traditional approach of merging big features less frequently all at once. However, Continuous Deployment is no clear way on the best approaches for their implementation. Objective: The goal of this paper is to identify the challenges and the solutions related to Continuous Deployment, and then see which of those solutions can be applied to which challenges. Method: This paper is a systematic literature review of the problems and the solutions found when implementing the continuous deployment practice inside an organization. It also presents which solution can be applied to which problem. Thirty-one articles published after 2015 were analyzed for this SLR. Results: 22 problems were grouped inside the categories Human and Organizational, Process, Tools, Infrastructure, Application Architecture and Testing. The 19 solutions found were grouped inside the categories Human and Organizational, Architecture, Process and Tools. Solutions have been found for 14 problems and some questions have been identified for future research. Conclusion: this article is to serve as a reference for the practitioner who wants to find how to solve a specific challenge when implementing the continuous deployment practice.