Do I need continuous delivery, or continuous deployment?

Continuous delivery and continuous deployment are related but distinct approaches to software release management, each with unique implications for risk, governance, and operational control. Continuous delivery involves keeping code in a releasable state with a manual trigger required for production updates, making it suitable for industries with strict compliance needs. In contrast, continuous deployment automates the entire pipeline, pushing every change directly to users once it passes testing, necessitating high confidence in testing infrastructure and real-time monitoring to handle risks effectively. Feature flags can decouple deployment from release, allowing teams to adopt continuous deployment's speed while maintaining the control of continuous delivery, providing a balance between rapid iteration and risk management. The choice between these approaches depends on an organization's tolerance for risk, test maturity, and cultural readiness, with many teams finding success in combining both through progressive delivery strategies such as canary releases.

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