| name | pc-deployment-strategy |
| description | Use when a release candidate is ready and the team must choose the safest rollout pattern, verification checkpoints, and rollback path for the current risk, blast radius, and operational constraints. |
| metadata | {"phase":"06-delivery","inputs":["ci-cd-pipeline","build-artifacts","release-plan"],"outputs":["deployment-runbook"],"prerequisites":["pc-ci-cd"],"quality_gate":"Rollout pattern, rollback path, verification checkpoints, and ownership are explicit and rehearsable for the current release","roles":["devops-engineer","tech-lead"],"methodologies":["all"],"effort":"medium"} |
Deployment Strategy
Decide how the release reaches production, how it is verified, and how it is reversed if reality disagrees with the plan.
Context
CI/CD automates the path to deployment; deployment strategy decides how much risk to take on each step of that path.
See context and anti-pattern notes.
Inputs
I/O contract notes define required inputs and authority.
Process
Step 1: Classify Release Risk
Assess user impact, data migration risk, trust-boundary change, reversibility, and observability quality. Decide whether the release is low risk, staged-risk, or high risk.
Step 2: Choose the Rollout Pattern
Match the pattern to the risk:
- rolling for low-risk stateless changes
- canary for user-facing or behavior-sensitive changes
- blue-green when instant rollback matters more than infrastructure cost
- big-bang only when the system or migration constraints truly require it
If the release cannot be observed or rolled back safely, the strategy is wrong.
Step 3: Define Verification and Expansion Gates
Specify what must be checked before traffic increases:
- smoke tests
- error rate and latency thresholds
- dependency health
- data validation
- business event sanity checks for the changed flow
Tie each checkpoint to an owner and a stop/continue decision.
Step 4: Write the Rollback-First Runbook
Document the exact release sequence, rollback trigger conditions, rollback commands, communication path, and post-deploy observation window. A rollout plan without a concrete rollback path is incomplete.
Outputs
Produce only declared outputs at their documented quality boundary.
Quality Gate
