When you are providing a live service to active users, it is dangerous to update production without a safe process.  Having a well laid out and process that is closely followed will help ensure your users are not disturbed by any updates you make.

Here is the process we use for websites and servers:

Server Promotion Process (Git Flow)

Server Promotion Process (Task Flow)

The advantages of this process include:

• Developers don’t need to worry about merging their code – they work on their feature and the lead takes care of the merge
• Only features that have passed testing get pushed into QA branch
• QA branch serves as the future production environment for accurate testing
• Pushing to production is simple and free of merge conflicts

We use a similar process for application updates:

App Promotion Process (Git Flow)

Server Promotion Process (Task Flow)

Since the application is closed and updated before the user can interact with the promoted version, upgrading apps can be done with one less layer.

Outlining and adhering to a thorough process to update production will ensure that your users are not affected in the event of an update.

This is the final post of our Better QA series. Read the previous post, Testing on Android – Accounting for Device Differences.