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Progressive Delivery

By James Governor, Kimberly Harrison, Heidi Waterhouse, Adam Zimman

How to Build the Right Thing For the Right Person At the Right Time

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Coming Fall 2025!

Technology leaders face a fundamental challenge: How do you know you’re delivering the right thing to the right person at the right time? Progressive Delivery offers a fresh perspective on this question, bridging the gap between software delivery and business value.

Drawing from extensive interviews with industry leaders at GitHub, Adobe, AWS, Disney, and Nike, the authors demonstrate how four key elements—abundance, autonomy, alignment, and automation—create a framework for sustainable product development. This isn’t just another technical manual or transformation playbook. Instead, it provides a lens for measuring your existing products against future standards and expectations.

If you’re responsible for product strategy, engineering, or digital experiences, this book will help you focus your team’s energy efficiently and deliver value that matters to all stakeholders, both within and outside your organization.

  • Publication Date November 4, 2025
  • Pages TK
  • Dimensions 6 x 9 inches
  • Paperback ISBN 9781950508976
  • eBook ISBN 9781950508983
  • Audiobook ISBN 9781950508990

Features

  • Practical Framework

    Learn how abundance, autonomy, alignment, and automation work together to create sustainable delivery practices that serve both your teams and users.

  • Real-World Examples

    Go beyond theory with detailed case studies from Nike, GitHub, Adobe, AWS, and Disney showing how leading companies implement Progressive Delivery in diverse contexts.

  • Business-Tech Bridge

    Understand how to connect technical capabilities with business goals, enabling better communication between development teams and stakeholders.

  • Future-Ready Approach

    Get actionable insights for building adaptable systems that can evolve with user needs while maintaining stability and control.

About the Book

Technology leaders face a fundamental challenge: How do you know you’re delivering the right thing to the right person at the right time? Progressive Delivery offers a fresh perspective on this question, bridging the gap between software delivery and business value.

Drawing from extensive interviews with industry leaders at GitHub, Adobe, AWS, Disney, and Nike, the authors demonstrate how four key elements—abundance, autonomy, alignment, and automation—create a framework for sustainable product development. This isn’t just another technical manual or transformation playbook. Instead, it provides a lens for measuring your existing products against future standards and expectations.

Through detailed case studies, you’ll discover:

  • How to leverage cloud abundance for meaningful experimentation.
  • Ways to enable team autonomy while maintaining coherent direction.
  • Strategies for aligning technical capabilities with business goals.
  • Methods to automate intelligently while preserving control.

The authors bring over 60 years of combined experience advising companies on technology adoption, engineering practices, and product strategy. Their insights show how organizations can move beyond traditional development cycles to create personalized experiences that truly serve their users—from Gen Z to Boomers.

If you’re responsible for product strategy, engineering, or digital experiences, this book will help you focus your team’s energy efficiently and deliver value that matters to all stakeholders, both within and outside your organization.

James Governor
Kimberly Harrison
Heidi Waterhouse
Adam Zimman
James Governor

James Governor

James Governor is the cofounder of RedMonk, the only developer-focused industry analyst firm. Based in London, he advises clients on practitioner-led technology adoption and engineering, open source, community and technology strategy. Governor is credited as having coined the term “progressive delivery.” Vermouth advocate. He lives in London.

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Kimberly Harrison

Kimberly Harrison

Kimberly Harrison is a sociologist focused on the development and adoption of new technology within the software industry. She enjoys working with early-stage startups that are developing new tools and methodologies for modern development teams. She specializes in strategic communications and community building. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

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Heidi Waterhouse

Heidi Waterhouse

Heidi Waterhouse spent a couple of decades as a technical writer at Microsoft, Dell Software, LaunchDarkly, and many, many startups, learning to communicate with and for developers. She coauthored Docs for Developers: An Engineer’s Field Guide to Technical Writing. She is passionate about storytelling, finding business value, and the ROI of laptop stickers. When she’s not helping craft startup messaging, you can find her in her sewing room listening to a book. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Adam Zimman

Adam Zimman

Adam Zimman is a VC advisor providing guidance on leadership, platform architecture, product marketing, and GTM strategy. He has over twenty years of experience working in a variety of roles from software engineering to technical sales. He has worked in both enterprise and consumer companies such as VMware, EMC, GitHub, and LaunchDarkly. Zimman is driven by a passion for inclusive leadership and solving problems with technology. His perspective has been shaped by a degree (AB) from Bowdoin College with a dual-focus in physics and visual art, an ongoing adventure as a husband and father, and a childhood career as a fire juggler.

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