  Continuous practices that rely on automation in the software development
workflow have been widely adopted by industry for over a decade. Despite this
widespread use, software development remains a primarily human-driven activity
that is highly creative and collaborative. There has been extensive research on
how continuous practices rely on automation and its impact on software quality
and development velocity, but relatively little has been done to understand how
automation impacts developer behavior and collaboration. In this paper, we
introduce a socio-technical theory about continuous practices. The ADEPT theory
combines constructs that include humans, processes, documentation, automation
and the project environment, and describes propositions that relate these
constructs. The theory was derived from phenomena observed in previous
empirical studies. We show how the ADEPT theory can explain and describe
existing continuous practices in software development, and how it can be used
to generate new propositions for future studies to understand continuous
practices and their impact on the social and technical aspects of software
development.
