Literature Review of Continuous Delivery: Future Research Directions for Critical Networks

Purpose: Continuous delivery (CD) is a recognized software industry practice reducing go-to-market time, strengthening customer feedback loop, and improving product quality. Telecommunication networks, considered critical infrastructure, are sensitive to changes in delivery models. The purpose of this work is to draw future research directions on how to ease adoption of CD for business-to-business (b2b) critical infrastructure products. Methodology: Literature review was performed using bibliometric analysis. It was augmented by looking at the work affiliated with telecom software vendors, to gauge their interest in shaping CD practices across the industry. Findings: The research is skewed toward engineering practices. While many studies help excelling product development efficiency, little is spent on the customer challenges. Transformation slowdowns are attributed to cultural or engineering gaps in product teams. Researchers affiliated with the Swedish vendor are particularly active in studying continuous integration and exploratory testing. Research implications: Scientists should seek to gain access to customer perspective. Sales, services, and business managers may be invaluable proxies of such information. Industry implications: Telecom vendors should enrich in-house approach to CD transformation by partnering with academics and employing scientific tools to develop new operating models. Originality: This work adds value by nudging research community to look for customer perspective and shift focus from R&D topics to commercialization challenges.