Continuous Delivery vs Deployment
What CI/CD Actually Means When Prod Is a Network, Not a Web App
Let’s clear up one of the most cursed misunderstandings in modern tech.
Continuous Delivery does not mean “YOLO deploy to prod on every commit.”
If that were true, most networking and security teams would have already burned the data center down for warmth.
Yet somehow, every CI/CD conversation eventually turns into:
“Wait… are you saying prod deploys automatically now?”
No.
Absolutely not.
Put the pitchfork down.
Continuous Delivery ≠ Continuous Deployment
These two get lumped together like they’re the same thing.
They are not.
Continuous Delivery means:
Every change is ready to be deployed
The system could deploy it safely
Humans still decide when it actually happens
Continuous Deployment means:
Every approved change goes straight to prod
No pause
No human gate
Maximum stress
Most infrastructure, networking, and security teams want Delivery, not Deployment.
And honestly? That’s the sane choice.
What Continuous Delivery Actually Looks Like
In the real world — not startup demo land — CD usually means:
Code merges cleanly
Tests and validation pass
Config checks don’t scream
Artifacts are built and ready
Then it stops
And waits.
For:
A change window
An approval
A human with coffee and context
CD is about readiness, not recklessness.
You’re shortening the distance between “this is ready” and “we approve this.”
Not deleting the approval entirely.
Why Networking & Security Teams Panic Here
Because they’ve seen things.
They’ve lived through:
“Just one quick firewall change”
“It worked in the lab”
“Nothing else should be affected”
Famous last words, every time
Infrastructure isn’t a stateless web app.
It has:
Blast radius
Compliance rules
Rollback nightmares
Change tickets that will be audited six months later
CD doesn’t remove those realities.
It just gives you guardrails instead of vibes.
Approval Gates Are Not a Failure
Somewhere along the way, approval gates got labeled as “anti-DevOps.”
That’s nonsense.
Approval gates mean:
Risk is acknowledged
Changes are reviewed
Humans stay accountable
That’s not slowing things down.
That’s not being reckless.
A fast pipeline that pauses before prod is still a fast pipeline.
Rollback Is Still a Human Problem
No matter how clean your pipeline is:
Rollbacks still need decisions
Someone still has to say “undo that”
Context still matters
CD doesn’t magically fix bad changes.
It just makes it easier to not deploy them in the first place.
Which is… kind of the point.
The Real Truth No One Puts on the Slides
Here it is:
Continuous Delivery doesn’t remove humans.
It just makes them faster at approving things.
And that’s a win.
Because the goal was never “no humans.”
The goal was fewer bad surprises.
Want the Real-World Version of This?
The free version explains why Continuous Delivery isn’t the same thing as auto-deploying to prod.
The Extended (paid) version gets into the messy, practical stuff most blog posts skip:
Where teams intentionally stop automation — and why that’s smart
What approval gates actually look like in real CI/CD pipelines
How networking and security teams balance speed with blast radius
Why “deploy everything automatically” is a terrible default for infrastructure
If you’re responsible for uptime and approvals, the paid version is where this topic actually becomes useful.
— JJ – Chief Packet Pusher