Add daily email for 2025-03-28

Work in sprints, deploy continuously

source/_daily_emails/2025-03-28.md

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: Work in sprints, deploy continuously
+date: 2025-03-28
+permalink: daily/2025/03/28/continuous
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - agile
+  - releases
+  - deployments
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  How often to you release changes to production?
+---
+
+Agile and Scrum have become standard approaches in software development.
+
+Work is planned and organised into iterations/cycles/sprints, usually lasting two weeks.
+
+As one sprint is being worked on, the next is usually already planned and the following one is being discussed.
+
+It's common for code deployments and releases to follow the same pattern.
+
+When a sprint is finished, the changes are released.
+
+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.
+
+It may be longer if the sprint is longer or if there are steps like manual testing that also happen.
+
+What if a change is needed or a bug is found?
+
+Is that going to be at least another two weeks before it can be addressed?
+
+Do you need to start using hotfixes and dealing with multiple branches and [merge conflicts][2]?
+
+I suggest separating your planning and work schedules from your deployments.
+
+Deploy as often as possible, even during a sprint.
+
+You want your feedback loop to be as small and quick as possible.
+
+But, importantly, [deploying code is different to releasing features][0].
+
+If you need to do manual testing, use feature flags to [separate deploying the code from releasing the feature][1].
+
+Then, when it's ready to go live, you only need to enable the feature flag - no code deployment needed.
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2023/06/21/deployments-or-releases
+[1]: {{site.url}}/daily/2022/12/07/separating-releases-from-deployments-with-feature-flags
+[2]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/02/18/conflicts