SKILL.md
Deployment Strategist
When to Use
- Choose a rollout pattern such as canary, blue-green, rolling, shadow, or feature-flagged release
- Write production rollout, cutover, rollback, or recovery plans
- Coordinate deploy strategy for schema changes, migrations, multi-region releases, or high-risk launches
- Define entry/exit criteria, health metrics, and go/no-go checks for phased deployment
- Brief stakeholders on release risk, blast radius, and contingency plans
When NOT to Use
- Implement CI/CD YAML, GitOps sync, or build systems →
devops - Provision VPCs, clusters, networking, or Terraform modules →
infrastructure-engineer - Add pipeline security gates or supply-chain controls →
devsecops - Manage multi-team program milestones and RAID logs →
technical-program-manager - Write cross-service architecture ADRs before implementation →
senior-system-architecture
Related skills
| Need | Skill |
|---|---|
| Pipeline implementation, GitOps, on-call | devops |
| Cloud networking, K8s clusters, IaC | infrastructure-engineer |
| Release gates, canary metrics for AI products | ai-lead-ops |
| Secure pipeline and supply chain | devsecops |
| App feature design and migrations in code | senior-fullstack-developer |
| Cross-team milestones, RAID, launch council | technical-program-manager |
| Architecture review before major migration | senior-system-architecture |
| Launch and customer messaging | communication-lead |
| K8s deploy execution and cluster ops | cluster-deployment-engineer |
Core Workflows
1. Strategy selection
Decision inputs:
| Factor | Question |
|---|---|
| Blast radius | How many users affected if deploy fails? |
| State | Stateless vs session-sticky vs data migration |
| Observability | Can you measure canary health in <5 min? |
| Rollback speed | RTO target (seconds vs hours) |
| Compliance | Change freeze, audit trail, approval depth |
Default recommendations:
| Profile | Strategy |
|---|---|
| Stateless API, good metrics | Canary or rolling + feature flags |
| Major version, schema change | Blue-green or parallel stack + phased traffic |
| Mobile / app store | Phased rollout by % users; no instant rollback |
| ML model + prompt | Shadow → canary → full; version pins |
| Data warehouse | Expand-contract migrations; backfill before cutover |
See references/strategy_selection.md for decision tree and trade-off matrix.
2. Rollout plan document
Produce a plan containing:
- Objective — what changes, for whom, by when
- Scope — services, regions, tenants, feature flags
- Phases — dev → staging → prod canary → prod 100%
- Entry/exit criteria per phase (metrics, tests, approvals)
- Rollback — trigger conditions, owner, steps, data implications
- Comms — internal channels, customer status page if needed
- Schedule — timezone-aware; avoid peak and freeze windows
See references/rollout_planning.md for template and stakeholder RACI.
3. Environment and promotion design
- Minimum: dev, staging, prod (prod-like staging mandatory for risky changes)
- Optional: preview per PR, perf, disaster-recovery drill env
- Promotion = new artifact digest, not rebuild; same artifact across stages
- Config via environment overlays; secrets from vault
See references/environments_promotion.md for topology patterns and config rules.
4. Database and dependency coordination
Expand-contract pattern for schema:
- Expand: deploy code tolerant of old and new schema
- Migrate data
- Contract: remove old paths in later deploy
Never drop columns or rename in same release as code depends on new shape without dual-write.
See references/strategy_selection.md for coupled release patterns.
5. Rollback and recovery
| Rollback type | When |
|---|---|
| Fast | Redeploy previous artifact digest; flip traffic |
| Config | Revert feature flag or config map |
| Data | Restore backup / run down migration (slow, risky) |
Define rollback triggers before deploy: error rate, SLO burn, failed smoke, manual abort.
See references/rollback_recovery.md for playbooks and drill cadence.
6. Risk, compliance, and sign-off
- Map change to risk tier (low / medium / high)
- High: CAB or change ticket, maintenance window, extra approvers
- Document blast radius and tested rollback
- Post-deploy verification window with named owner
See references/risk_compliance.md for tier definitions and evidence list.
When to load references
- Choose strategy →
references/strategy_selection.md - Rollout plan template →
references/rollout_planning.md - Environments →
references/environments_promotion.md - Rollback →
references/rollback_recovery.md - Change control →
references/risk_compliance.md