Progressive delivery vs Smoke test: Choosing a deployment strategy

Progressive delivery

Progressive delivery is a deployment strategy that gradually rolls out new features or updates to a subset of users before introducing them to the entire user base. This approach allows development teams to test changes in a production environment with minimal risk, enabling them to gather real-time feedback and monitor performance metrics before full deployment.

By controlling the exposure of new functionality through techniques like canary releases, blue-green deployments, or percentage-based rollouts, teams can quickly identify and address issues before they affect all users. Progressive delivery minimizes the impact of potential problems while providing the flexibility to roll back changes if necessary, making it an effective risk management strategy for modern software delivery.

Smoke test

Smoke testing is a deployment verification strategy that involves performing preliminary tests on a newly deployed application to ensure that critical functionality works correctly. These basic tests check that the core features and essential components of the application are operational, confirming that the build is stable enough for further testing.

A smoke test serves as a quick sanity check before investing time in more comprehensive testing efforts. It typically includes a small subset of test cases that cover the most critical paths through the application, allowing teams to identify severe issues early in the deployment process. If a smoke test fails, the deployment is typically rolled back immediately, preventing defective code from reaching users.

Comparing progressive delivery and smoke testing

Scope

• Progressive Delivery: Involves the entire application but limits user exposure initially.

• Smoke Test: Covers only critical functionality but is applied to the entire deployment at once.

Timing

• Progressive Delivery: Occurs gradually over an extended period, allowing for ongoing assessment.

• Smoke Test: Happens immediately after deployment as a quick validation before proceeding.

Risk management

• Progressive Delivery: Minimizes risk by limiting the impact of failures to a small user subset.

• Smoke Test: Reduces risk by quickly identifying major issues before they reach users.

Feedback mechanism

• Progressive Delivery: Collects real user feedback and production metrics over time.

• Smoke Test: Provides immediate technical feedback about basic functionality.

Rollback approach

• Progressive Delivery: Enables selective rollbacks affecting only the users exposed to the new version.

• Smoke Test: Usually triggers complete rollbacks if any critical test fails.

Feature flags with progressive delivery

Feature flags are an essential component of progressive delivery, enabling fine-grained control over feature availability. With feature flags, teams can deploy code to production while keeping new features hidden from users, then gradually expose functionality to specific user segments based on criteria like geography, user attributes, or random sampling. This approach allows for real-time toggling of features without requiring new deployments.

In a progressive delivery strategy, feature flags serve as the control mechanism for managing the rollout phases. Teams can initially enable a feature for internal users or beta testers, then gradually increase the percentage of users who can access it while monitoring performance metrics and user feedback. If issues arise, the feature can be quickly disabled for affected users without rolling back the entire deployment, providing a more surgical approach to deployment risk management.

Feature flags with smoke testing

Feature flags complement smoke testing by allowing teams to isolate new functionality during the testing process. By wrapping new features in feature flags that are disabled by default, teams can deploy code to production and run smoke tests on the existing functionality without the new features interfering with core operations. This ensures that the baseline application remains stable while new code integrates with the production environment.

When combining feature flags with smoke testing, teams can create specialized smoke tests that verify both the existing application with features turned off and additional tests with features enabled. This two-phase approach allows verification that the underlying deployment is sound and that the new features work correctly when activated. If the standard smoke tests pass but the feature-specific tests fail, teams can leave the feature disabled in production while fixing issues, rather than rolling back the entire deployment.

Progressive delivery and smoke testing are two distinct approaches to software deployment, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Progressive delivery involves gradually rolling out new features to users, often starting with a small percentage and slowly increasing as confidence builds. This method allows developers to monitor real-world performance, gather user feedback, and detect issues before they affect the entire user base. The primary benefits include reduced risk, as problems impact fewer users; better user experience, as issues can be addressed before widespread deployment; and the ability to collect valuable metrics to guide further development. However, progressive delivery requires more complex infrastructure to support feature flags or canary deployments, adds overhead in monitoring and management, and can extend the overall deployment timeline.

Smoke testing, in contrast, is a preliminary testing technique that verifies whether the deployed build is stable enough for further testing. It’s quick, focused on core functionality, and acts as a first line of defense against major issues. The advantages of smoke testing include its simplicity and speed, immediate feedback on critical failures, and minimal resource requirements. However, smoke testing only catches obvious problems, provides limited coverage of the application, and might miss edge cases or performance issues that only emerge under specific conditions or scale. Choose progressive delivery when deploying high-risk changes to production environments with active users, when you have the infrastructure to support gradual rollouts, or when user feedback is crucial before full deployment. Opt for smoke testing when you need quick validation after deployment, when resources are limited, or as part of a broader testing strategy that includes more comprehensive testing methods.

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