50 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
50 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: Work in sprints, deploy continuously
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date: 2025-03-28
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permalink: daily/2025/03/28/continuous
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tags:
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- software-development
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- agile
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- releases
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- deployments
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cta: ~
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snippet: |
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How often to you release changes to production?
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---
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Agile and Scrum have become standard approaches in software development.
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Work is planned and organised into iterations/cycles/sprints, usually lasting two weeks.
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As one sprint is being worked on, the next is usually already planned and the following one is being discussed.
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It's common for code deployments and releases to follow the same pattern.
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When a sprint is finished, the changes are released.
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But that means if a task is worked on at the start of the sprint, it won't be available for at least two weeks.
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It may be longer if the sprint is longer or if there are steps like manual testing that also happen.
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What if a change is needed or a bug is found?
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Is that going to be at least another two weeks before it can be addressed?
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Do you need to start using hotfixes and dealing with multiple branches and [merge conflicts][2]?
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I suggest separating your planning and work schedules from your deployments.
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Deploy as often as possible, even during a sprint.
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You want your feedback loop to be as small and quick as possible.
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But, importantly, [deploying code is different to releasing features][0].
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If you need to do manual testing, use feature flags to [separate deploying the code from releasing the feature][1].
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Then, when it's ready to go live, you only need to enable the feature flag - no code deployment needed.
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[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2023/06/21/deployments-or-releases
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[1]: {{site.url}}/daily/2022/12/07/separating-releases-from-deployments-with-feature-flags
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[2]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/02/18/conflicts
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