Release ease

Deploying and releasing code to end-users is quick and simple.

What is Release ease?

Release ease refers to the simplicity, speed, and reliability of the process for deploying code changes to production environments and delivering those changes to end-users. When organizations achieve release ease, development teams can push updates to production quickly, frequently, and with minimal friction or risk. This encompasses the entire release pipeline, from code integration to deployment and monitoring.

How Release ease improves developer experience and productivity

Reduces deployment anxiety and stress

When releases are easy, predictable, and safe, developers experience less stress around deployments. The fear of breaking production—a significant source of developer anxiety—diminishes considerably.

"You can always break something, but we have tools to quickly fix or roll back changes. You don't need to worry about other people releasing code in parallel because we can identify who broke what. And if everything fails, well, that's just how it goes sometimes."

CTO at Online Booking Platform

Accelerates feedback loops

Easier releases mean more frequent deployments, which enable developers to get user feedback faster and iterate more rapidly on their code.

"Currently, we deploy to production up to 150 times a day. Every developer has their own dedicated dev environment running in the cloud that they can spin up within about a minute."

Director of Engineering at Software Development Company

Increases developer autonomy and ownership

When releases are easy, organizations can empower developers to control their own deployments, fostering greater ownership and responsibility.

"When changes are ready for deployment, we don't want developers to hand them off to a release management team. We want engineers to press that release button themselves because it gives them a sense of empowerment and responsibility. They can say 'I am deploying my changes to production.'"

Director of Engineering at Software Development Company

Enhances productivity through reduced wait times

Developers spend less time waiting for deployment windows or dealing with complex release procedures, and more time building valuable features.

"With automated tests in place, I can make changes, run them through automation, get sign-off, and deploy to production all in the same day. Compare that to working with a big monolithic system with fixed release dates where I'd have to wait two weeks."

Director of Engineering at Software Development Company

Why Release ease is important

Release ease is crucial for successful dev teams because it directly impacts several key business metrics:

1. Time to market: Organizations that can release quickly can respond faster to market changes and customer needs.

2. Developer satisfaction: Cumbersome release processes are consistently cited as a major source of developer frustration. By contrast, teams with streamlined deployments report higher job satisfaction.

3. Operational stability: Counter-intuitively, teams that deploy more frequently often have more stable systems because each change is smaller and easier to troubleshoot if problems occur.

4. Innovation capacity: When releases are easy, teams can experiment more freely with new features and approaches, fostering innovation.

5. Incident reduction: As evidenced by one organization's experience below, improving release processes can dramatically reduce production issues.

How to measure Release ease

The Network Perspective DevEx Survey addresses this directly with the question:

"Deploying and releasing code to end-users is quick and simple."

This question gauges how developers perceive the ease of the release process. Low scores here indicate friction in your deployment pipeline that needs addressing.

Beyond survey data, complementary metrics to consider include:

• Deployment frequency: How often code is deployed to production
• Lead time for changes: How long it takes for code to go from commit to production
• Change failure rate: What percentage of deployments cause incidents or require rollbacks
• Mean time to recovery: How quickly the team can recover from deployment failures

These metrics, known as the DORA metrics (DevOps Research and Assessment), provide objective data that complements the subjective feedback from the survey question.

What blocks Release ease in organizations?

Complex manual processes

Organizations often develop complicated release procedures involving multiple manual steps and approvals, leading to delays and errors.

Rigid release schedules

Some companies limit deployments to specific windows (e.g., once every two weeks), creating bottlenecks and reducing agility.

"I'm particularly interested in metrics like how long it takes to deploy code from the repository to production. I've encountered issues where developers would work in isolation on a new service for two months before deploying to production, rather than delivering incrementally."

CTO at Online Trading and Investment Platform

Lack of automation

Insufficient test and deployment automation creates a high manual burden and increases the risk of human error.

Fear of breaking production

When teams lack confidence in their tests and deployment safeguards, they become overly cautious about releases.

Unclear ownership

When release responsibilities are spread across multiple teams (development, operations, release management), coordination issues arise.

How to improve Release ease

Implement continuous integration and delivery

Automate the build, test, and deployment process so that code can flow smoothly from development to production.

Adopt feature flags

Use feature flags to separate deployment from feature release, enabling safer deployments.

"Feature flag driven development is essential. You need the ability to release features and toggle them on or off, or even roll them out to a specific percentage of users and control where that traffic goes."

Senior Engineering Manager at Video Sharing Platform

Shift to smaller, more frequent releases

Break large deployments into smaller, incremental changes that carry less risk and are easier to troubleshoot.

Empower developer ownership

Move deployment responsibility closer to developers to increase autonomy and reduce handoffs.

"We're giving development teams end-to-end responsibility for the entire process. This approach works. The fewer intermediaries between the team and the final result, the better the outcome."

VP of Engineering at Software Development Company

Create feedback mechanisms

Establish monitoring and alerting that provide quick feedback on deployment issues.

"We set up monitoring systems and addressed each problem systematically, fixing issues one by one. Over time, we reduced our quarterly issues from around 300 to just 60-70, which is a significant improvement from where we were a year and a half ago."

Head of Engineering at Technology Company

Develop a progressive deployment strategy

Use techniques like canary releases or blue-green deployments to reduce the risk of new deployments.

Benefits of easy release cycle

Increased business agility

Organizations can respond to market changes and customer feedback more quickly.

Higher developer satisfaction and retention

Developers prefer working in environments where they can see their code in production quickly.

Reduced coordination costs

With simpler, more automated release processes, less time is spent on coordination and more on creating value.

Improved system stability

More frequent, smaller releases lead to fewer catastrophic failures and easier troubleshooting.

Enhanced experimentation culture

Teams can test new ideas more rapidly when the cost of deployment is low.

Better customer relationships

Faster fixes and features improve customer satisfaction and trust.

Common questions about Release ease

Do more frequent releases increase production incidents?

Contrary to traditional thinking, research shows that high-performing teams deploy more frequently while maintaining better stability. The key is having proper automated testing, monitoring, and rollback capabilities.

How can we balance release ease with security requirements?

Security can be enhanced, not compromised, by automating compliance checks and building them directly into the CI/CD pipeline rather than treating them as manual gatekeeping steps.

Should we mandate that all teams follow the same release process?

While some standardization helps, the most successful organizations tailor release processes to team and product needs, focusing on outcomes (frequency, reliability) rather than specific procedures.

How do we measure success in improving release ease?

Combine subjective feedback from the Network Perspective DevEx Survey with objective DORA metrics like deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and mean time to recovery.

What's the first step in improving our release process?

Begin by measuring your current state using surveys and metrics, then identify the biggest pain points. Often, starting with automated testing provides the foundation for further improvements to release ease.