The rhythm or frequency at which a team ships software to production. A high release cadence means deploying often (multiple times a day or week); a low one means infrequent, larger releases. Release cadence has a direct relationship with quality: teams that release more often tend to ship smaller changes, which are easier to test, easier to roll back, and faster to fix if something goes wrong. In startup environments, increasing release cadence is often a goal, but it creates pressure on testing processes that were designed for slower, more thorough cycles.
For example: a team moving from monthly releases to weekly ones finding their manual regression suite too slow to keep pace; or a startup with continuous deployment running automated smoke tests on every commit to keep pace with developer throughput.
For example: a team moving from monthly releases to weekly ones finding their manual regression suite too slow to keep pace; or a startup with continuous deployment running automated smoke tests on every commit to keep pace with developer throughput.
