The 10-Step Checklist for Continuous Delivery

11 min readJan 14, 2025

Continuous Delivery (CD) transforms how teams ship software by automating the path to production, making releases routine, predictable, and stress-free. With faster delivery cycles and improved quality, CD enables teams to provide users with reliable value.

This guide offers a 10-step checklist for implementing CD effectively, featuring concrete examples, actionable insights, and best practices. Whether you’re starting fresh or refining your processes, this resource will help you build a robust, high-performing delivery pipeline.

The 10-Step Checklist

1. Adopt Version Control Best Practices

Version control is the backbone of modern software development, enabling teams to collaborate effectively and maintain a history of code changes.

Use Systems Like Git: Implement a distributed version control system like Git to manage your codebase. Git allows multiple developers to work independently and merge their changes seamlessly. It provides robust features for branching, merging, and reverting changes, making it suitable for projects of any size.
Implement trunk-based development (GitFlow): Establish a branching strategy that aligns with your workflow, such as Gitflow, feature branching, or trunk-based development. Use branches to isolate work on new features or bug fixes.
Enforce pull requests and code reviews: Incorporate code reviews into your process by utilizing pull requests on platforms like GitHub or Bitbucket. Code reviews enhance code quality, encourage knowledge sharing, and promote team collaboration.
Maintain clean commit history with conventional commits: Use a standardized commit message format to indicate change type, scope, and purpose, improving readability and traceability. For example, by categorizing commits into types like “fix,” “feat,” or “chore”.

# 1. Create a short-lived feature branch from main (aka trunk)
git checkout main
git pull origin main
git checkout -b feature/new-feature

# 2. Implement the new feature then stage and commit changes
git add .
git commit -m "feat: implement new feature"# 3. Push the feature branch
git push -u origin feature/new-feature# 4. Create a pull request (PR) on GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket
#    - Request reviews from team members
#    - Address any feedback by making additional commits# 5. Once approved, merge your changes back into main (the trunk)
#    - Optionally rebase or squash before merging to keep history clean
git checkout main
git pull origin main
git merge feature/new-feature# 6. Push merged changes to main
git push origin main

2. Set Up Continuous Integration (CI)

Continuous Integration is crucial for detecting issues early and ensuring that code changes integrate smoothly into the main codebase.

Automate Builds and Tests Using CI Tools: Utilize a CI platform like Semaphore to automate your build and test processes. Semaphore allows you to define workflows consisting of pipelines, which are sequences of tasks to build, test, and deploy your application. You can create pipelines using the visual workflow editor or by writing YAML configuration files for greater control and versioning. For instance, you can set up a pipeline that triggers whenever code is pushed to a branch or a pull request is opened. In your pipeline configuration, you specify the steps needed to build your application and run your test suite.
Provide Immediate Feedback to Developers: Configure your CI system to report build and test results promptly. Semaphore integrates with version control systems to provide status checks on commits and pull requests. Immediate feedback allows developers to address issues quickly, maintaining code quality and reducing the likelihood of defects reaching production. Semaphore’s integration capabilities ensure that developers are notified of build failures or test issues as soon as they occur, fostering a proactive development environment.

3. Implement Automated Testing

Automated testing ensures that code changes do not introduce regressions and that your application behaves as expected.

Write Unit, Integration, and End-to-End Tests: Develop a comprehensive testing strategy that includes different levels of testing. Unit tests check individual components, integration tests verify the interaction between components, and end-to-end tests simulate real user scenarios. This layered approach helps catch issues at various stages.
Automate Tests to Run on Every Code Change: Configure your CI pipeline to run tests automatically whenever code is pushed or a pull request is opened. Tools like Semaphore allow you to define jobs within your pipeline that execute your tests. For example, in a JavaScript project using Jest, you can set up a job that runs npm test as part of your pipeline.

Example pipeline configuration for running automated tests on push and pull requests:

name: CI Pipeline
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci
      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test
      - name: Build
        run: npm run build

4. Manage Dependencies Effectively

Proper dependency management ensures that your application builds and runs consistently across different environments.

Cache Dependencies: In CI/CD pipelines, caching dependencies can drastically speed up builds. Caches eliminate the need to fetch packages from scratch on every run, saving time and network bandwidth. Ensure the cache invalidates properly when the lockfile changes to avoid stale or inconsistent installs.

Example of caching dependencies in a pipeline:

name: CI Pipeline

# Define the default agent (machine and operating system) for all jobs
agent:
  machine:
    type: e1-standard-2   # Use a standard Linux machine with 2 CPU cores and 4GB RAM
    os_image: ubuntu2004  # Use Ubuntu 20.04 as the operating system image# Define the sequence of tasks to be executed in the pipeline
blocks:
  - name: Install Dependencies  # Descriptive name of the block
    task:
      prologue:
        commands:
          - checkout          # Check out the code from the version control repository
          - cache restore     # Restore cached 'node_modules' directory if available
      jobs:
        - name: Install Dependencies  # Name of the job within this block
          commands:
            - npm install     # Install Node.js dependencies specified in package.json
      epilogue:
        always:
          commands:
            - cache store     # Cache the 'node_modules' directory for future pipeline runs

Use lockfiles: Employ tools specific to your programming language to manage libraries and packages. For example, use npm or Yarn for JavaScript projects, pip for Python, or Maven/Gradle for Java. These tools help you specify exact versions of dependencies, ensuring consistency and reproducibility.
Keep Dependencies Updated and Secure: Regularly update your dependencies to benefit from the latest features and security patches. Automate this process using tools like Dependabot or Renovate, which can create pull requests when new versions are available. Additionally, use security auditing tools such as npm audit or Snyk to detect vulnerabilities in your dependencies.

Example dependency management scripts with npm:

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    "audit": "npm audit",
    "outdated": "npm outdated",
    "update": "npm update"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.18.0",
    "react": "^18.2.0"
  }
}

npm audit alerts you to known vulnerabilities.
npm outdated shows which packages are behind the latest release.
npm update automatically updates dependencies within their defined semver range.

5. Automate Deployment Processes

Automating deployment processes ensures that software releases are consistent, repeatable, and less prone to human error.

Utilize Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Implement tools like Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation to define and manage your infrastructure through code. IaC allows you to version control your infrastructure configurations alongside your application code, ensuring that environments can be recreated or scaled reliably. By integrating IaC into your CI/CD pipeline, you can automate the provisioning and configuration of environments needed for testing, staging, and production. Semaphore pipelines can include jobs that execute IaC scripts, enabling you to manage infrastructure changes as part of your deployment process.

Infrastructure as Code example using Terraform:

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
  
  tags = {
    Name = "production-web-server"
    Environment = "production"
  }
}

Maintain Consistent Environments Across Stages: Ensure that your development, testing, staging, and production environments are as similar as possible. Consistency reduces the risk of environment-specific issues and simplifies debugging. Containerization tools like Docker can help achieve consistency by packaging your application and its dependencies into portable containers. In your Semaphore pipeline, you can use Docker containers to run your application in the same environment at every stage.
Enable Zero-Downtime Deployments: An automated deployment strategy such as rolling updates or blue-green deployments can avoid service interruptions. By seamlessly transitioning user traffic between the old and new versions, you ensure uninterrupted service. Tools like Kubernetes or AWS’s Elastic Container Service offer built-in mechanisms for orchestrating zero-downtime rollouts.

By automating your deployment processes and using tools like IaC and Docker, you ensure that each deployment is performed in a controlled and consistent manner. In the next step, we’ll establish a multi-stage pipeline to ensure continuous delivery.

6. Establish Continuous Delivery Pipelines

A well-defined pipeline automates the flow of code changes from commit to deployment, ensuring that every change is tested, validated, and ready for release.

Define clear stage progression: Outline the stages your code should pass through before reaching production. Common stages include build, test, staging, and production. Each stage can have its own set of checks and balances to ensure code quality and readiness. In Semaphore, pipelines are defined using YAML configuration files. You can specify the sequence of blocks (stages), dependencies, and the conditions under which each block should run.
Automate Gating & Promotions: As each stage (e.g., test, staging) completes successfully, you can set up automatic or manual “gates” that determine when to promote the application to the next stage. For instance, after all tests pass in the staging environment, you can automatically trigger a production deployment. This ensures only tested, stable code is promoted.

Multi-stage pipeline example with gating and promotions:

name: CI/CD Pipeline

agent:
  machine:
    type: e1-standard-2
    os_image: ubuntu2004blocks:
  - name: Build
    task:
      jobs:
        - name: Compile Code
          commands:
            - checkout
            - ./build.sh  - name: Test
    dependencies:
      - Build
    task:
      jobs:
        - name: Run Unit Tests
          commands:
            - ./run_tests.sh  - name: Deploy to Staging
    dependencies:
      - Test
    task:
      jobs:
        - name: Deploy to Staging
          commands:
            - ./deploy.sh staging  - name: Deploy to Production
    dependencies:
      - Deploy to Staging
    run:
      when: "branch = 'master'"
    task:
      jobs:
        - name: Deploy to Production
          commands:
            - ./deploy.sh production

Configure Pipelines in Tools Like Semaphore: Use Semaphore’s visual workflow editor or YAML configuration to set up your pipelines. Semaphore allows you to define triggers, conditions, and promotions to control the flow of your pipeline.

7. Integrate Monitoring and Logging

Integrating monitoring and logging into your CD pipeline ensures that you can track application performance, detect issues early, and respond proactively.

Provide a Single Pane of Glass with Unified Dashboards: Consolidate logs, metrics, traces, and alerts into one dashboard for end-to-end observability. Many platforms (e.g., Datadog, Grafana, or Kibana) can bring together data from multiple sources, giving your team an at-a-glance view of system health. This “one pane of glass” approach reduces context-switching and speeds up root-cause analysis.
Set Up Centralized Logging and Alerts: Collect logs from all parts of your application into a centralized system using tools like ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), Splunk, or Fluentd. Centralized logging makes it easier to search, analyze, and correlate logs from different services. Configure alerts to notify your team when certain thresholds are crossed or errors occur. This proactive approach allows you to address issues before they impact users significantly.
Utilize Trace Sampling to Optimize Data Storage: Implement distributed tracing with tools like Jaeger, Zipkin, or OpenTelemetry to trace requests across microservices. However, storing every trace can be expensive and unwieldy. Trace sampling helps manage the volume of data by capturing only a fraction of all requests — allowing you to retain critical visibility into complex issues while keeping storage costs in check.
Implement Performance Monitoring: Use monitoring tools to track the health and performance of your application in real-time. Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, New Relic, or Datadog can collect metrics on CPU usage, memory consumption, response times, and more. By integrating performance monitoring into your deployment process, you can automatically roll back deployments if certain metrics indicate a problem. Additionally, monitoring helps you understand how new code changes affect the application’s performance.

Example monitoring setup using Prometheus Node.js client:

const client = require('prom-client')

const counter = new client.Counter({
  name: 'http_requests_total',
  help: 'Total HTTP requests',
  labelNames: ['method', 'path', 'status']
})app.use((req, res, next) => {
  res.on('finish', () => {
    counter.inc({
      method: req.method,
      path: req.path,
      status: res.statusCode
    })
  })
  next()
})

By integrating monitoring and logging into your CD pipeline, you enhance the observability of your application, enabling your team to maintain high availability and performance.

8. Ensure Security and Compliance

Security and compliance are critical components of a robust Continuous Delivery pipeline. Integrating security practices early and throughout your pipeline helps prevent vulnerabilities from reaching production and ensures that your software meets regulatory requirements.

Integrate Security Scans into Pipelines: Incorporate automated security scanning tools into your CI/CD pipelines to detect vulnerabilities in code, dependencies, and configurations. In Semaphore, you can add security scan jobs to your pipelines. For example, you might use tools like Snyk, OWASP ZAP, or SonarQube to scan for known vulnerabilities. By integrating security scans into your pipeline, you ensure that vulnerabilities are identified and addressed before code is deployed.
Automate Compliance Checks and Manage Secrets Securely: Automate compliance checks to ensure adherence to industry regulations and standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS. Semaphore allows you to manage secrets securely through its Secrets feature. You can store sensitive information like API keys, passwords, and certificates, and inject them into your jobs as environment variables or files without exposing them in your codebase.

Integrating security and compliance into your pipeline reduces risks and helps maintain user trust.

9. Optimize for Performance and Scalability

Optimizing your application for performance and scalability ensures that it can handle growth and provide a smooth user experience under varying loads. Include performance and load testing in your pipeline to identify bottlenecks and ensure that new code doesn’t degrade performance. Use tools like JMeter, Gatling, Grafana k6, or Locust to simulate user traffic and measure how your application performs under stress.

Design your infrastructure to scale efficiently. Utilize cloud features like auto-scaling, load balancing, and resource allocation. In Semaphore, you can automate the scaling of your infrastructure using IaC tools like Terraform or Kubernetes. Automating infrastructure scaling ensures that your application can handle increased demand without manual intervention.

10. Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement

The success of Continuous Delivery relies on the people and culture within your organization. Encouraging continuous learning and improvement ensures that your processes evolve and adapt over time.

Hold Regular Retrospectives: Schedule regular meetings for the team to reflect on what is working well and what can be improved. Use insights from your CI/CD pipeline metrics, such as build times and failure rates, to inform discussions. Example topics for retrospectives include pipeline efficiency and bottlenecks, test coverage and reliability, deployment success rates, and feedback from stakeholders
Encourage Ongoing Learning and Adoption of Best Practices: Promote a culture of knowledge sharing and professional development. Provide resources for learning, such as training sessions, workshops, and access to relevant literature. Encourage team members to stay updated on industry trends and to experiment with new tools and methodologies.

By fostering a culture of continuous improvement, your team remains agile, innovative, and better equipped to deliver high-quality software.

Conclusion

Implementing Continuous Delivery is an iterative process. Start with the basics and gradually enhance your pipeline based on team needs and capabilities. Focus on automation, reliability, and feedback loops to build a delivery system that enables rapid, confident releases.

Here’s a summary of the 10-step checklist:

Adopt Version Control Best Practices
Implement Automated Testing
Set Up Continuous Integration
Manage Dependencies Effectively
Automate Deployment Processes
Establish Continuous Delivery Pipelines
Integrate Monitoring and Logging
Ensure Security and Compliance
Optimize for Performance and Scalability
Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Start by evaluating your current processes against this checklist. Identify areas where improvements can be made and prioritize them based on impact and feasibility. Implement changes incrementally, involving your team in planning and execution to ensure buy-in and smooth transitions.

Additional Resources:

Ready to take your Continuous Delivery pipeline to the next level? Try Semaphore for efficient and reliable CI/CD workflows. Sign up today and accelerate your path to seamless software delivery.

Originally published at https://semaphoreci.com on January 14, 2025.