Motivation and goals of productive development workflows

Moving fast in terms of development workflows aims to enable fast feedback by fast turnarounds. In order to increase productivity, developers who work on the application's behavior need to verify the implemented features and bug fixes in a timely manner. This includes the time spent on builds, software tests, and deployments.

The key to productive workflows is automation. Software engineers should spend as much time as possible on designing, implementing, and discussing business logic and as little as possible on cross-cutting concerns and repetitive tasks. Computers are designed for quickly and reliably performing deterministic, straightforward tasks. Humans, however, are better at designing, thinking, and brainstorming creative and complex tasks. Simple, straightforward processes that don't require a lot of decision-making should therefore be performed by software.

Build systems are a good start. They automate compiling, resolving...