A framework for evaluating continuous microservice delivery strategies

The emergence of service-oriented computing, and in particular microservice architecture, has introduced a new layer of complexity to the already challenging task of continuously delivering changes to the end users. Cloud computing has turned scalable hardware into a commodity, but also imposes some requirements on the software development process. Yet, the literature mainly focuses on quantifiable metrics such as number of manual steps and lines of code required to make a change. The industry, on the other hand, appears to focus more on qualitative metrics such as increasing the productivity of their developers. These are common goals, but must be measured using different approaches. Therefore, based on interviews of industry stakeholders a framework for evaluating and comparing approaches to continuous microservice delivery is proposed. We show that it is possible to efficiently evaluate and compare strategies for continuously delivering microservices.