How to orchestrate IaC and application deployments together in CI/CD?

In the context of scaling teams, a key challenge in CI/CD setups is the separation between infrastructure and application deployments, which can lead to deployment fragility, slowness, and risk. Engineering leaders seek ways to orchestrate infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and application deployments within a single, reliable CI/CD pipeline while maintaining separate lifecycles to avoid slowing teams down. The article outlines a strategy where infrastructure changes, which are slower and riskier, are validated and planned separately from applications, which are faster and easier to roll back. This involves validating infrastructure changes early, separating planning from application, sequencing deployments with infrastructure readiness, maintaining traceability between versions, and using controlled processes for rollbacks. The overarching goal is to ensure that infrastructure and application code evolve together without being tightly coupled, optimizing for cost and performance while maintaining high standards of execution and traceability within CI/CD pipelines.