Continuous Deployment
Continuous deployment extends Continuous Delivery: every change that passes Continuous Integration and downstream tests is automatically promoted to production without a manual release button. We rate it assess, not default: adopt Continuous Delivery everywhere; use continuous deployment when Software as a Service shape, observability, and release safety nets are in place.
Blurb
Continuous deployment is a strategy in which every change that passes automated tests is automatically released to production.
Summary
Where it fits:
| Technique | Production promote |
|---|---|
| Continuous Delivery (adopt) | Human or scheduled gate |
| Continuous deployment (assess) | Automatic on green main |
Prerequisites before assess becomes adopt for a product:
- Feature Flags to ship dark and enable per user/tenant
- Fast automated rollback (redeploy N-1 image, ArgoCD history, or equivalent)
- Metrics, logs, and alerts that detect regressions within minutes
- Staging that exercises integration/system tests meaningfully (not only unit tests)
- Team comfort with trunk-based flow and small batches
Typical flow (SaaS on K8s): GitHub Actions builds and pushes an image on merge; ArgoCD auto-syncs the new tag to production (or progressive sync per env). Config and secrets stay out of the image per 12 Factor App.
When to skip: on-prem deliverables, regulated change windows, multi-customer installs where customers control upgrade timing, or immature test/observability culture.
Not the same as: deploying from laptops; Capistrano SSH pushes; or "CD" meaning only Continuous Delivery with a manual promote.
Details
| Topic | Notes |
|---|---|
| Risk | Production blast radius is the whole pipeline’s responsibility |
| Quality bar | CI + staging must be trusted; flaky tests block all progress |
| Compliance | May still need audit trails and approval policies even if deploy is automatic |
| Canary/blue-green | Optional layers on top; not a substitute for flags and rollback |
Garden pattern: adopt Continuous Delivery; trial/assess continuous deployment per product after flags + observability + rollback drills. Pair with CI-CD Tools and GitOps rather than imperative deploy scripts.
References