Continuous Deployment

What is continuous deployment?

Continuous deployment (CD) is a software development approach that goes one step further the continuous delivery and continuous integration. In continuous deployment, code updates are automatically tested and deployed to production without a manual intervention. 

Continuous deployment requires not only a high level of automation, but also a strong focus on quality.  That is why, key benefits of continuous deployment include:

• Faster time-to-market: with automated deployment of the code changes as soon as they are ready, organizations can roll out new features and updates to their customers more quickly.
• Greater agility: continuous deployment allows organizations to be more agile, as they can make and deploy changes to their software more quickly and easily.
• Reduced risk: by automating the deployment process, organizations can reduce the risk of errors being introduced into their software, which can help them to minimize downtime.
• Improved software quality: continuous deployment requires a strong focus on quality, as code changes are automatically deployed to production after the necessary tests. This can help organizations to produce higher quality software.

The continuous deployment can be also more risky, as it involves automatically releasing code changes to production without requiring a manual approval. As a result, organizations using a continuous deployment approach need to maintain very robust automated testing and quality assurance procedures in place to ensure that code updates are thoroughly tested and do not introduce errors or vulnerabilities into the software.