The New Stack Podcast Why You Can't Build AI Without Progressive Delivery
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Dec 23, 2025 James Governor, co-author of the book "Progressive Delivery" and analyst at RedMonk, explores the critical link between AI development and modern release practices. He highlights how AI systems can produce unpredictable behaviors, making progressive delivery techniques essential. Governor introduces his four A’s framework—abundance, autonomy, alignment, and automation—which emphasizes user satisfaction over mere metrics. He argues for reconnecting teams with real user outcomes and shows how these strategies enhance both software delivery and AI deployment.
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Progressive Delivery As Engineering Physics
- Progressive delivery measures and manages the "jerks" in software delivery using the four A's: abundance, autonomy, alignment, and automation.
- Treat these forces like physics to reduce surprising behavior and improve user outcomes.
Idea Born From KubeCon Frustration
- James Governor describes his early inspiration for progressive delivery as born from frustration at KubeCon and lack of concrete use cases for service mesh.
- Adam Zinman later validated and joined the idea, turning it into a broader movement.
Cloud Enables Experimental Abundance
- Cloud and open source created abundance that enables experiments and multiple deployment environments at low cost.
- This abundance changes what delivery practices like blue-green can reasonably assume and enables more experiments.