Considerations

The automation provided by the environment and the rigour and discipline of teams ensures that the way features are built and deployed makes change safe for the business. Rigour and discipline also helps teams to take into account business sensitivities to deploying change - for example in periods of high volume trading. Teams adopt a way of working that allows them to avoid having to deploy change in such sensitive periods. This is part of the balance between Rate of Delivery and Quality of Service that all teams must pay attention to as a part of the product life-cycle.

Teams pay attention to batch size when making change. They focus on frequently deploying small batches of change to minimise the risk and impact associated with change.

Levels

Green

Automated Deployment Of Small Batches Of Change

All changes are deployed to production without manual intervention. Operational impacts from change are infrequent and, when they do occur, are limited in scope and impact.

Attention is paid to the frequency of deployment to minimise batch size and limit impact of and risk from change. There is a policy across the product teams to control the frequency of deployment of change during sensitive business periods.

Product teams improve their automatic deployment mechanisms as necessary.

Amber

Manual Deployment Of Small Batches Of Change

Change is deployed into production through a change process involving raising requests and having them approved. Changes deployed are largely correct and typically have no adverse operational impact.

Attention is paid to the frequency of deployment to minimise batch size and limit impact of and risk from change. Restrictions imposed during sensitive business periods are followed.

Product teams reflect on Shelf Time and Cost of Delay and seek new ways of working to minimise them.

Red

Manual Deployment Of Large Batches Of Changes

Change is sometimes deployed into production without adhering to agreed processes. Operational impacts from change are in excess of organisational expectations and sometimes require management intervention (for example as a major incident).

Changes are collected into inefficiently large batches. Reducing the frequency of change through large batches limits the time and effort dedicated to manual change processes. Escaped defects mean that emergency changes have to be made during sensitive business periods.

There is little consideration of Shelf Time or Cost of Delay or of improving ways of working to reduce them.