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Continuous Application Lifecycle

One deployment best practice is the continuous application lifecycle. In this approach, application features and enhancements are delivered in small packages on a continuous delivery schedule. New features are considered and scheduled according to a fixed release schedule (for example, once every quarter). This model of phased delivery provides an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of prebuilt application functionality, minimizes risk, and allows you to adapt the application to changing business requirements.

Continuous application lifecycle incorporates changing business requirements into the application on a regular timeline, so the business customers do not have a situation where they become locked into functionality that does not quite meet their needs. Because there is always another delivery date on the horizon, features do not have to be rushed into production. This approach also allows an organization to separate multiple, possibly conflicting change activities. For example, the upgrade (repository merge) of an application can be separated from the addition of new configuration.

Best Practice

The continuous application lifecycle approach to deployment allows organizations to reduce the complexity and risk on any single release and provides regular opportunities to enhance application functionality.