Continuous Delivery (CD) is a software development methodology where iterations are delivered frequently and not necessarily following a fixed schedule. Even if the final production deployment will be done manually eventually, the idea is that whenever the code is merged it is potentially production-ready.
The good news is the fact that switching to Continuous Deployment (as a “side effect”) will ensure that you know how to fix, test and deliver faster. It will improve both your validation and development process. On the side, moving from weekly releases to continuous deployment can be a significant shift in your software development process, and will require careful planning and execution but once done, your SDLC will become much more mature, the time to value will go down and your ability to react faster with a lower risk will be increased
Before drilling down into the actions needed in order to switch your release process to Continuous Delivery/ Continuous Deployment, let’s first understand the clear benefits:
- Increase Responsiveness – In weekly releases, customers escalations, blocker issues in production, regressions etc have to wait for the next release. With CD such fixes will be deployed in production as soon as they are ready and validated.
- Better Code Quality – Moving to CD will force the team to expand and improve the automation level and the review processes which also lead to a better code.
- Improve Reliability – With more frequent releases, the number of code changes and size of changes decreases, It will make any problems analysis easier and quicker. In such cases the rollback will be easier and much safer as well
Now, when when benefits are clear, in order to move faster and improve your deployment method, here are the steps you should take in order to make this transition:
- Understand your current release process: Before making any changes, it’s important to understand how your current release process works, including the tools, workflows, and people involved. This will help you identify potential roadblocks to continuous deployment and determine the changes that need to be made.
- Define your continuous deployment strategy: Continuous deployment involves automating the entire release process, from building to testing to deployment. Before moving forward and starting with the implementation, you need to define your goals and strategy, including the automation level at the end of the process you would like to achieve, the tools you will use, the steps involved in the process, and potential roadblocks.
- Automate your build and testing processes: The first step to continuous deployment is to automate your build and testing processes. This includes setting up a continuous integration (CI) pipeline that builds and tests your code every time it is committed to your source code repository. This will ensure that issues are caught early in the development process, reducing the risk of problems in production.
- Implement feature flags: Feature flags allow you to control the release of new features to specific users or groups of users, making it easier to test and validate new features in production without affecting all users. It is also recommended to turn the feature flags off by default and turn them on in production only after the deployment is completed successfully and under close monitoring
- Monitor and analyze your deployment: Continuous deployment involves deploying changes to production on a regular basis, so it’s important to have a comprehensive monitoring and analysis process in place to ensure that any issues are caught and addressed quickly.
- Train your team: Moving to continuous deployment requires a significant shift in mindset and process, so it’s important to train your team on the new tools and processes involved. This will help ensure that everyone is on the same page and can work together effectively to achieve your goals.
Overall, moving from weekly releases to continuous deployment can help you deliver software faster, with greater reliability and efficiency. By following these steps, you can make the transition smoothly and enjoy the benefits of a more streamlined and automated release process.
As always, if more info or help are needed feel free to reach out at info@ngoconsulting.co
