From 6-month Releases to Release Whenever—with Egil Osthus, CEO at Unleash
Summary
Host Katerina interviews Egil Ostus, CEO of Unleash, on modernizing enterprise release processes. Ostus details his journey shifting from slow, waterfall releases to continuous delivery by prioritizing stakeholder alignment and transparent communication. He emphasizes breaking down large transformations into small, manageable steps to build trust and demonstrate early wins. The discussion highlights how feature management tools enable safer, faster feedback loops with customers, reducing risk and accelerating value delivery.
Topics discussed
Introduction to CTO Insights and episode overview
Egil's background and founding Unleash
Challenges of releasing software at Visma
Stakeholder management and hidden engineering work
Incremental improvements and avoiding big bang changes
Defining the target state and achieving small wins
Timeline of transformation and DevOps maturity models
Managing blockers and using experiments to build trust
The inspiration behind Unleash and feature flags
Canary releases and gradual rollout strategies
Key takeaways and final advice for engineering leaders
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