CD
Acronymcontinuous-delivery, continuous delivery, continuous-deployment, continuous deploymentDefinitions
Continuous delivery — every change that passes the pipeline is releasable, and shipping it is one button a human presses
The artifact is built, migrated, tested and staged; what remains is a decision, not work. The discipline it buys is that the decision is never blocked on engineering — if the business wants today’s commit in front of users, nothing has to be finished first.
Continuous deployment — every change that passes the pipeline goes to production automatically, with no human in the path
The stricter reading, and the one that makes the pipeline the only gate. It demands what delivery merely rewards: fast tests, safe migrations, and a rollback that a tired person can run at 2am.
Two different practices behind one abbreviation, and the difference is a human being. Delivery means you could ship every commit; deployment means you do.
Avoid: letting the ambiguity pass in a planning conversation. Ask which one is meant. A team that says it wants CD and means delivery is asking for a build pipeline; a team that means deployment is asking for a rollback story, a migration policy, and tests it actually trusts.