The role of velocity in CD and associated risks
Deployments are events on a system that can have a huge impact on it. In traditional infrastructures, this thesis led to the assumption that it’s safer to deploy in larger batches and less often. Such deployments were called Big Bang deployments and were often done in the middle of the night. This was done to reduce the risk of failure and to have a higher chance of success. Let’s inspect this a bit:
- Larger batches: If the changeset of software gets larger, the risk of failure and misbehavior increases, and our options when a change has a negative impact on customers get fewer. When a problem in a larger batch occurs, we might have a long changelog to investigate, and it might get very hard to find the root cause of the problem. Furthermore, it might be hard for the developers to recapitulate how they implemented a feature, as they may have implemented it a long time ago. Last, but not least, it might become difficult...