Doing Continuous Integration is a suboptimal intervention point in the system

Trying to do more of Continuous Integration by trying to continuously integrate is a suboptimal intervention point in the system (can be a monitoring point, though).

The leverage point for doing more CI is practicing smaller steps, building a safety net, and shortening code review times.

CI comes as a natural side-effect of these practices and it’s impossible to do it if we have any of these:

1) big steps

2) delayed review

3) lack of safety net we’re confident in

When optimizing for these capabilities it’s easy to see why XP gives the best (maximal) results.

1) Refactoring, 2) Continuous/immediate code reviews with pair and #mobprogramming, and 3) TDD