Progressive delivery

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Progressive delivery is an evolution of continuous delivery that adds two controls on top of "the code is in production": progressive rollout (exposure expands in stages rather than all at once) and progressive delegation (control over each release shifts from engineering toward product and support as confidence grows). Feature flags, canary releases, and percentage rollouts are its building blocks.

The two halves: progressive rollout and progressive delegation

The term, coined by RedMonk analyst James Governor in 2018, named a pattern teams were already converging on. The first half, progressive rollout, means a release reaches users in widening rings (internal staff, then a canary, then 10%, then everyone), each tier gated on healthy metrics. The second half, progressive delegation, means the power to flip a feature on moves outward over time: engineering ships it dark, then product decides when to reveal it, then support can toggle it per customer. Feature flags are what make both halves a configuration decision rather than a deployment. For the full treatment, including a technique-selection rubric and the DORA case, read the two-pillar playbook.

How it differs from continuous delivery

Continuous delivery gets code to production safely and often, but it stops at deploy. Progressive delivery picks up where it ends, treating release as a separate, gradual, reversible act. In practice that means deploying behind a flag (a dark launch), ramping with a percentage rollout, and keeping a kill switch ready. For a worked example of staging a rollout, see progressive rollouts in practice.

Want the full picture? Read the concept guide: Rollout strategies →

Related terms

Canary release

A canary release exposes a new version to a small group of users first and watches its metrics before rolling it out to everyone, so problems surface on a fraction of traffic instead of the whole fleet.

Percentage rollout

A percentage rollout serves a feature to a defined share of users, chosen by a deterministic hash, so the same users stay in the cohort as you ramp the percentage up.

Dark launch

A dark launch ships a feature to production turned off or invisible to users, so the code runs in the live environment before anyone sees it. You reveal it later on your own schedule.

Browse the full feature flag glossary →

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