Software Release Glossary

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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