What Are the Key Stages in Software Production Deployment?

You've just finished writing code for a new feature. What happens next? Do you simply push it straight to production where millions of users might interact with it?

If you're thinking "that sounds risky," you're absolutely right. This is why software teams have developed systematic deployment processes that gradually move code from development to production, catching issues before they impact real users.

As an engineer, understanding these stages will help you navigate your team's deployment process and contribute to building reliable software. Most teams don't use every stage we'll discuss below—your specific team's process depends on factors like product size, user base, and risk tolerance.

Development Stage

After completing technical design, teams move into the development stage, typically in a development environment. What's a development environment? Think of it as your coding sandbox—a place where you can experiment and build without affecting anything users see.

Most development happens locally on your machine, though cloud-based IDEs are becoming increasingly popular. Why do you think teams prefer isolated development environments? They prevent experimental code from accidentally breaking systems that other developers or users depend on.

Internal Testing

Once development is complete, what's the first line of defense against bugs? Internal testing. This stage typically involves two approaches: Alpha testing and dogfooding.

Alpha Testing

Alpha testing means developers and QA engineers test the software before external users see it. But what exactly are they testing for?

Alpha testing serves two primary purposes: ensuring new features work as expected and verifying that existing functionality remains unaffected. Testers simulate user behavior, exploring different ways someone might interact with the software.

Why is this simulation important? Because even well-written code can have unexpected interactions with other parts of the system.

Dogfooding

After Alpha testing comes dogfooding—having internal employees use the product as actual users would. Why the unusual name?

The term comes from a decades-old email from Microsoft's Paul Maritz about "eating our own dogfood," encouraging teams to use their own products. When the Threads team developed their app, they opened it to the entire Instagram team for dogfooding, collecting valuable feedback from real usage patterns.

What makes dogfooding so effective? Internal employees use the product naturally, not following test scripts. This authentic usage often reveals issues that structured testing might miss. Plus, it provides product insights that can guide future development.

Staging Environment Testing

Here's a critical question: if your code works perfectly in your development environment, will it definitely work in production?

Unfortunately, no. Development environments often use simplified configurations and mock data to make development easier. But production environments have different database configurations, network setups, security constraints, and performance requirements.

This is where staging environments come in. A staging environment mimics production as closely as possible, helping teams catch environment-specific issues before they reach users. Think of it as a dress rehearsal before the actual performance.

Beta Testing

After staging validation, teams often conduct Beta testing with external users. This comes in two forms: Closed Beta (limited invitation) and Open Beta (publicly available preview).

Why involve external users when you've already done extensive internal testing? External users bring fresh perspectives and usage patterns that internal teams might never consider. They stress-test the system in ways developers couldn't anticipate.

Even with a small group of external users, Beta testing often uncovers issues that internal testing missed. Plus, early user feedback helps teams iterate and improve the product before full launch.

Canary Deployment

Now comes the moment of truth: deploying to production. But should you release to all users simultaneously?

Most teams use canary deployment—gradually rolling out to small percentages of users (like 10%, then 30%, then 50%, finally 100%). Why this gradual approach?

If something goes wrong at 10% rollout, only a small subset of users is affected. You can quickly roll back and fix the issue. But if you released to 100% of users immediately and something breaks, the impact would be catastrophic.

The name "canary deployment" comes from coal miners who used canaries to detect dangerous gases. Miners would send canaries into mines first—if the birds returned safely, the air was safe. If not, miners knew to stay out.

In software deployment, the small percentage of initial users are like the canaries, helping detect problems before full exposure.

How do teams actually implement this gradual rollout? Many use feature flags to control which users see new functionality. Instead of deploying different code versions, teams deploy code with toggles that can be turned on or off for specific user groups, enabling instant rollbacks if issues arise.

Full Production Rollout

After successfully navigating all previous stages, the feature reaches full production rollout. But is this the end of the process?

Not quite. Full rollout begins the monitoring phase. Teams must watch system performance, user behavior, and error rates to catch any issues that only emerge at full scale. Effective application monitoring becomes crucial at this stage to ensure system stability and quickly detect any problems.

Equally important: tracking the impact of your work. Can you measure whether your feature achieved its intended goals? This data becomes crucial for performance reviews and future job applications. Many engineers struggle to articulate their impact because they never tracked post-launch metrics.

Building Your Understanding

Understanding deployment processes helps you contribute more effectively to engineering teams. Each stage serves a specific purpose in catching different types of issues before they reach users.

As you encounter your team's deployment process, ask yourself: Which stages does your team use? What tools support each stage? How does your team measure success after deployment?

These questions will help you understand not just what your team does, but why they've chosen their particular approach.

Support ExplainThis

If you found this content helpful, please consider supporting our work with a one-time donation of whatever amount feels right to you through this Buy Me a Coffee page, or share the article with your friends to help us reach more readers.

Creating in-depth technical content takes significant time. Your support helps us continue producing high-quality educational content accessible to everyone.