The unified perspective of digital transformation and continuous software engineering

Software is a key component of most products, services, industrial processes, and back-office functions. Thus, companies may gain an advantage by establishing fast feedback cycles to improve their software. Continuous software engineering (CI/CD) is being primarily studied as an engineering topic. However, the rest of the organization needs to align and be prepared to utilize the benefits of CI/CD. In this paper, we explore the overlap between CI/CD and digital transformation (DT). We study literature in both areas to develop a map of conditions, mechanisms, and outcomes. As a result, we present a unified perspective of CI/CD and DT. We found that CI/CD can be seen as an implementation of DT in a software organization. DT perspective can help to guide the adoption of CI/CD from an organizational perspective.