Decoupling deployment from release

Implementing Continuous Delivery continues to be a challenge for many organizations, and it remains important to highlight useful techniques such as decoupling deployment from release. We recommend strictly using the term Deployment when referring to the act of deploying a change to application components or infrastructure. The term Release should be used when a feature change is released to end users, with a business impact. Using techniques such as feature toggles and dark launches, we can deploy changes to production systems more frequently without releasing features. More-frequent deployments reduce the risk associated with change, while business stakeholders retain control over when features are released to end users.