A Preliminary Panoramic View of Continuous Software Engineering Adoption in Brazilian Organizations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5753/jserd.2025.3807Keywords:
Continuous Software Engineering, Stairway to Heaven, Survey, Diagnostic InstrumentAbstract
Context: Software organizations have faced several challenges, such as the need for faster deliveries, frequent changes in requirements, lower tolerance to failures, and the need to adapt to contemporary business models. Agile practices have allowed organizations to shorten development cycles and increase customer collaboration. However, this has not been enough. Organizations should evolve to continuous and data-driven development in a continuous software engineering approach. Continuous Software Engineering (CSE) consists of a set of practices and tools that support a holistic view of software development with the purpose of making it faster, iterative, integrated, continuous, and aligned with business. Implementing CSE requires changes in the organization’s culture, practices and structure, which may not be easy. Objective: We aim to provide a preliminary picture of CSE adoption in Brazilian organizations. Method: We adapted and used Zeppelin, a diagnostic instrument of CSE adoption based on the Stairway to Heaven Model (StH), to perform a survey with 28 Brazilian organizations aiming at investigating the adoption of CSE practices. After conducting the survey, we interviewed five of the participants to complement the obtained results and better understand how CSE has been performed in their organizations. Results: The survey results indicate that organizations have better addressed agile and continuous deployment practices compared to continuous integration and continuous experimentation practices. However, this scenario varies slightly depending on the type of organization. They also show that CSE adoption has been heterogeneous, but there are patterns in the adoption of some practices. The interview results showed that although the five interviewed organizations have distinct CSE scenarios and perform different practices, some practices are common in all of them (particularly agile practices) and some difficulties are faced by all of them (e.g., automated tests). Conclusion: Although the StH model proposes a sequential and evolutionary path for CSE adoption, organizations have not always followed it systematically. There are indeed CSE practices that depend on others and thus contribute to sequential implementation. However, organizations tend to adopt the practices gradually, covering different stages, and evolving according to the organization’s needs. Moreover, different organizations perform CSE practices in different ways.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Paulo Santos Júnior, Fabiano B. Ruy, Moisés S. Omêna, Monalessa P. Barcellos
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