Sustainable Pace For Organisations

We have all seen the press releases come out. The CTO of some big organisation proudly announces that with this new agility thing they are now able to release to market every three months instead of yearly. Great news isn't it? Great endorsement of agile techniques, isn't it? Have you ever worked in one of those organisations? What is it like working in the delivery teams for one of those organisations? Is it, as the press release seems to indicate, some sort of IT workers' paradise where features flow easily into production and there are smiles and profits for all?

Or does it feel like an endless treadmill where releasing every three months just means jumping through all the hoops you had to jump through for the yearly releases but now instead of doing it once a year you are doing it all the time? Where the nightmare month you used to have once a year to push the release kicking and screaming out the door is now your normal workload? Chances are, it's not the first one. Feeling burned out? Are we achieving our results by throwing away one of our key principles - the principle of sustainable pace?