Delivery Lifecycle

Plan, code, review, build, test, package, release, deploy, verify, operate, learn — each stage with its inputs, outputs, evidence and rollback story.

The Software Delivery Lifecycle

Plan through learn as a chain of stages, each with defined inputs, outputs, automation, evidence and a way back.

Q · What are the actual stages between an idea and a change users can depend on, and what does each stage owe the next?
Plan and Code

The decisions taken before and during writing — change shape, size, reversibility and coexistence — determine how safely it can ship.

Q · What has to be decided before the first line is written for the change to be shippable without heroics?
Review as a Gate

Human review reliably catches some classes of defect and reliably misses others; treating it as a general safety net is how the missed classes reach production.

Q · What does code review actually catch, what does it provably not catch, and what should therefore be checked some other way?
Package and Release

Build one artifact, address it by digest, promote it through environments, and make the release a recorded decision separate from the deployment.

Q · What exactly is being shipped, how do you refer to it unambiguously, and who decided it should go?
Verify in Production

A deploy reporting success says the orchestration worked; verification is comparing the new version against a baseline on signals that reflect users.

Q · How do you know a change is working, as opposed to knowing it was deployed?
Learn and Improve

The stage that closes the loop: turning what production taught you into a merged change, rather than into a document and a resolution to be careful.

Q · How does what production taught you become a change to the system rather than a memory?