Software Release Glossary

Most commonly used terms and acronyms by product managers, engineers and devops
ABCDFKMPRSTUV

A

A/B Testing (client-side)

A/B testing involves a process of testing and comparing two different versions of a website or feature in order to see which one performs better.

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A/B Testing (server-side)

Server-side testing refers to any type of testing that occur directly on the web server instead of in the user’s browser.

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B

Blue-Green Deployment

Blue-green deployment is a strategy that uses two production environments where traffic is directed to one of these environments once changes are ready.

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C

Canary Deployment

Canary deployment, or canary release, is a deployment strategy that reduces risk by releasing software for testing on a small subset of users.

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CI/CD Pipeline

A CI/CD pipeline is a series of steps which automates the software delivery process allowing releases to be delivered rapidly and efficiently.

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Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery is a software development practice that enables code changes to be released to end-users at any time.

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Continuous Deployment

Continuous deployment is a strategy of software release where every change is released to production automatically without human intervention.

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Continuous Integration

A software development practice where developers continuously integrate their changes into the trunk resulting in more stable product releases.

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D

Dark Launch

Dark launch is a software release technique that involves turning on features for a subset of users using feature flags to gather feedback and improve releases.

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DevOps Engineer

A DevOps engineer is an IT professional who oversees the release of new code and facilitates collaboration between development and operation teams for increased productivity.

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F

Fake Door Testing

Fake door testing is a method where you can measure interest in a product or new feature without actually coding it.

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Feature Branch

Feature branching allows developers to collaborate effectively around a central mainline by keeping any changes to a feature in a separate branch.

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Feature Flags

Software development tool whose purpose is to turn certain functionalities on and off in order to safely test new features without changing code.

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Feature Testing

Feature testing is a software development process that allows you to test several variations of a feature to validate new releases and to determine the one with the best positive impact.

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Feature Toggle

Feature toggles, also known as feature flags, is a technique that allows specific features to be switched on or off quickly and safely for testing purposes.

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K

Kill Switch

A kill switch is a button used to disable features, such as turning off a faulty feature during production, usually implemented through a feature flag.

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M

Multi-Armed Bandits

Multi-armed bandits are a complex form of A/B testing that use machine learning algorithms to dynamically allocate traffic to better performing variations.

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P

Progressive Delivery

Progressive delivery is a software development technique where features are gradually rolled out to users to minimize risk of testing in production.

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R

Release Manager

A Release Manager manages all aspects of the software delivery lifecycle and works across teams to ensure a proper release schedule.

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Remote Config

Remote config is a mobile app development technique where the behavior or features of an app can be changed remotely without releasing an app update.

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Ring Deployment

Ring deployment is a technique to gradually introduce new features to different groups of users to limit impact or blast radius on end-users.

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S

Site Reliability Engineer

A site reliability engineer is typically a software engineer with IT operations experience that creates highly reliable systems to solve complex problems.

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Smoke Testing

Smoke testing is a rapid regression test of major functionality to detect early errors and indicate whether the product is ready for further testing.

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Soak Testing

Soak testing is a type of performance and load test that evaluates how a software application handles a growing number of users for an extended period of time.

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Software Development Life Cycle

Software development life cycle (SDLC) refers to the different stages that a software goes through from planning to completion.

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T

Trunk-based Development

Trunk-based development is a practice in which developers divide their work into small batches and later merge their work into a shared trunk or mainline at least once daily.

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Type 1 and Type 2 Errors

Type 1 and type 2 errors, also known as false positive and false negative) are two types of statistical errors that may result from a hypothesis test such as A/B tests.

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U

User Acceptance Testing

User acceptance testing (UAT) is used to verify whether a software meets business requirements and whether it’s ready for use by customers.

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V

Version Control

Version control, or source control, is the practice of managing and tracking changes to software code.

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