Continuous deployment: the questions we get asked most

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. The questions about continuous deployment that come up most often on our calls.

Code gets read far more often than it gets written, and usually by someone with less context than the author had. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Do we need to care about this?

Deploying should be boring enough to do on a Friday. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly.

How do we know it is working?

Small frequent releases are safer than big rare ones. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

How to tell if yours is fine

Most development decisions are really maintenance decisions wearing a different hat. Three things worth confirming about continuous deployment before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Small frequent releases are safer than big rare ones — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.