Smarter Week

How to automate it

How to automate “coordinate releases and deployments by hand”

Here is the best way to spend less time on this, best first. Each comes with steps you can follow today.

60 min
typically, once a week
60%
of the time can be automated
A small project
to set up

Fix 1 of 1

Automation

Deploy automatically on merge and use feature flags for releases

When every merge deploys through the pipeline and risky changes hide behind flags, there is no release-day coordination: shipping is routine and rollback is a toggle.

Typically saves about 55% of the time16 h to set up
  1. 1Automate deploys from the main branch to staging, then production after checks pass.
  2. 2Add automatic rollback on failed health checks.
  3. 3Use feature flags (LaunchDarkly, Statsig, Unleash or your platform's flags) to separate deploying from releasing.
  4. 4Generate release notes from merged PRs automatically.

Tools: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Argo CD · LaunchDarkly · Statsig · Unleash

Who does this task

Roles in our library that list this as one of their common tasks. Each guide covers the rest of that role’s week.

QA / Test engineerDevOps / Site reliability engineer

HourLeak · the 8-minute work audit

How many hours does this cost you?

The free 8-minute check works out where your week goes and gives you your top fixes. The team scan does the same for everyone and adds it up, so you know which leaks to fix first.

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Answers are anonymous. Leaders only see team totals.

Other common tasks for QA / Test engineers