Let's Deploy On Friday

A Cultural Shift To Fight Deployment Anxiety

Dec 03, 2023

Let's talk about something that might make you do a double-take: deploying on Fridays. It sounds like I'm asking for a weekend of chaos, right?

But stick with me. This fear we've all grown accustomed to is a big, blinking sign that we've got some work to do on our processes—and it's well worth doing.

This newsletter is based on the Stream “Let’s Deploy on Friday – Deep Dive Into Continuous Delivery” we had with

Tobias Mende

Denis Čahuk

and Camila Merino1. The Podcast issue will be released here tomorrow, as usual, after this newsletter, so stay tuned.

Here's the Deal

We're in an industry that's all about innovation. Yet, we've all silently agreed to this notion that QA teams handle the tests, developers don't, and Fridays are for anything but deployments. This isn't just a quirky tradition; it indicates a deeper issue. Let's dismantle these outdated beliefs and cultivate a robust, continuous delivery culture that excites us about Friday push days.

Why the fear to deploy?

Every developer has been there—sweating bullets over the thought of deploying before the weekend. What if it goes wrong? What if I'm patching code while my mates are enjoying their downtime?

This Thinking often reflects a bigger problem: a lack of proper systems, processes, and a mature DevOps culture.

And I understand that fear; I was there a lot. As an accountable tech lead, I fixed broken Friday deploys on Saturday. Not to mention the upset clients, users, and stakeholders when broken deploys stacked up.

🍪 But let's be honest, this problem is not so much about Fridays; it's about that we aren't in control of what we do anymore and try to stick with it during weekdays to have a vague feeling of control.

Watch: What are the root causes of the anxiety?

Getting Real About the Problems

🍪 Let's get real—the final code push isn't the finish line; it's more like a baton pass to the real judges: the users. If we're not circling back for their feedback, we're running the race with blinders.

Plus, a feedback culture isn't just lovely; it's a must-have for actual ownership and control over our work.

So our problem isn't the weekend or "us not being there"; it's about our way of work and taking responsibility and ownership.

It becomes even worse if we postpone responsibility into the future since our product, code base, and scope of the application are growing. Our problems will do so as well.

Tech Meets Culture – We Need Shift in Culture.

To tackle these fears head-on, we need a mix of tech wizardry and cultural shifts.

🍪 I'm talking about rolling out features with toggles, getting cozy with continuous deployment, and shortening those pipelines to make them as snappy as our coffee breaks.

Our Culture and our Thinking as a team must change according to our needs. The fundamental idea of agile is to dare to receive feedback as early and often as possible.

This idea to put your creations to the test as early as possible will help you take the proper steps to overcome that fear.

Continuous Delivery is the Foundation.

Let’s be serious for a moment about the idea of software delivery. The topic we discussed today and during the stream was about being afraid to deliver value continuously.

That’s huge, isn’t it? Huge in a negative way. To shift towards a positive outcome, to make deploys less painful and to transition into a continuous way of deployment and receiving feedback, we need to shift our mindset.

🍪 We must transition into Continuous Delivery (CD)2 to overcome that anxiety. It combines practices like trunk-based development (TBD) and continuous integration, which will help us foster maturity and responsibility in our teams. Fostering autonomy and a healthy sense of feedback-hunger.

Building a Bold New Culture

We're in this together, fellows. That means fostering a culture where we're all part-owners of the deployment process.

❌ 'Done' is not pushing to git

❌ 'Done' is not pushing the ticket into the 'done' column

❌ 'Done' is not CI/CD Pipeline is green.

🍪 'Done' should say something—we've got the green light from the people we're building for: our users, the customers, the clients.

This 'Done' is about ownership. We need to be willing to own the outcome of the process negatively and positively. It's about the responsibility of what we are doing as software developers.

Watch: Deployment Pains and a Wrong “Definition of Done.”

Aiming for Maturity in Our DevOps Culture

Maturity in our line of work isn't about gray hairs or years on the job; it's about stepping up with responsibility and owning our piece of the puzzle.

And guess what? That leads to a more robust, less fearful approach to releasing updates, even on the brink of the weekend.

DevOps Culture, by definition, is a solution to deployment anxiety. Once we have gone through the journey to transition into a DevOps culture, we will happily deploy, no matter which day of the week we have.

🍪 DevOps, in combination with proper continuous delivery as a foundation engineering basis, will let us master multiple deployments a day, with a lot of feedback, aka. Business value.

Closing Thoughts

It's time we embrace the end-of-week deployments with open arms. This isn't about being reckless; it's about being confident in our engineering practices.

So, as we gear up for another week, let's shift our mindset. Let's make Friday deployments the new normal, the ultimate sign of our team's maturity and prowess.

🍪 This is not only for seniors; this is a topic for all stages of developers. It's not so much about skills; it's more about the willingness to do so and practice.

Watch: Let’s wrap up this topic:

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

Engage with your teams, discuss deployment anxieties and champion practices that feed continuous feedback and improvement.

Remember, a great team doesn't shy away from challenges; it meets them head-on with a plan and a smile. Here's to making every Friday a day we stand proud of our work, ready to deliver excellence.

And remember: Progress is the foundation of Happiness, and progress isn't about breakpoints.

Have a great Sunday, everyone!

Adrian

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