Audit your entire software delivery pipeline. Move from reactive firefighting to proactive building. Ship faster, safer, and with confidence.
Timeline: Weeks 5-6 | Focus: Delivery Speed & Stability
| Aspect | Current | Desired | Done? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feature shipping frequency | Weekly / Ad hoc | Predictable cadence | ☐ | Currently 1-2 features per month, aim weekly |
| Testing before production | Manual / Limited | Staging / Feature flags | ☐ | Use staging environment & feature toggles |
| Firefighting vs proactive | High urgent | Low urgent, high planned | ☐ | 60% urgent fixes, aim <20% |
| Code review process | ☐ | |||
| Deployment process | ☐ | |||
| Rollback capability | ☐ | |||
| Error monitoring | ☐ | |||
| Post-deploy verification | ☐ |
Determine how often you actually deploy new code to production. Is it daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or just whenever things accumulate? Look at your commit history or ask your dev team for an average. This gives you a baseline. If it’s “not often” or erratic, set a goal (e.g. “ship at least one small improvement or fix every week”) to create a more predictable cadence.
Action Items:
Write down every step between having a new idea and seeing it live for users. Include things like coding, code review, testing (QA), approval steps, deployment, and verification. Any step that is manual or overly ad-hoc is a potential delay or failure point. For example, if deploying involves a developer running commands from their laptop, that’s a risk. By mapping this out, you can spot which parts of your pipeline need automation or clearer process.
Action Items: