Automation is not enough!
Automation is a prerequite for a deployment pipeline. It’s the only way to get to a repeatable, reliable, “push button” deployment.
It’s been over a decade since Continuous Delivery burst on the scene. Today, most teams use homegrown scripts or some automation tool to deploy software. It’s fair to say that most organizations probably have implemented the principle of “Automate Almost Everything.” But this is not enough to combat the level of stress involved when releasing software onto production.
There is a big difference between deploying software in pre-production environments and releasing software into production. The release of software into production is the most critical event in the lifecycle of an application. Yet, most teams don’t have a good strategy to mitigate risk at this stage.
While you should follow the same process for deployments and releases, releasing software is a business decision that impacts customers.
Bad software in production is a problem, and debugging issues in production lead to unfortunate consequences and angry users.
At the same time, if you can get early and faster feedback from a subset of your users, you can exponentially improve how you deliver value.
To make Continuous Delivery work, you need to be able to push new code into production without fear. Automation is essential, but safeguards and strategies are required to ensure you can quickly deploy new features while systems stay up and customers remain happy.
Without a strategy, execution is aimless.
What makes a good strategy?
Clearly defined goals, data-informed decisions, and contingency plans are the pillars of a sound deployment strategy.
Define your goals by developing a shared understanding with all application stakeholders on how you will roll out applications and features to the customer base. Develop a data-driven decision-making process to gain real-time insights and predictions for better business outcomes.
Building a good strategy is much easier when you know exactly what you need to achieve.
What happens if you have a problem? Your team needs to be prepared in case things don’t go right. You need to answer questions like:
- How do you handle the “cut-over” to production?
- Are you going to allow users to evaluate features before general availability?
- Do you want to incrementally roll out to a small segment of your customer base first?
- What is considered a success for a feature in production?
Conclusion
There is a lot to consider and many options, but the good news is that the best strategies are in the OpsMx Advanced Deployment Strategies eBook. The eBook summarizes the most common deployment strategies used by companies like Google, Netflix, and Amazon. The ebook covers strategies, benefits, challenges, and best practices. It also gives you a primer on Progressive Delivery.
Get our complimentary eBook today to help ensure your DevOps success.
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