IFO4
Loading...The discipline of producing software in short cycles such that any commit is, in principle, deployable to production through a fully automated pipeline subject to gating policies. Continuous delivery is not the same as continuous deployment: delivery requires that the artefact be deployable; deployment requires that it be deployed without human gating. The federation accepts either as a high-maturity engineering posture and requires that the pipeline produce signed artefacts, signed deploy decisions, and an immutable audit trail under UFMS-001:2.4.
Formalised by Jez Humble and David Farley in the 2010 work Continuous Delivery; built on agile and lean software practices of the preceding decade.
Federation members claiming continuous-delivery posture must publish their pipeline architecture, the gating policies enforced, and the signing scheme for artefacts and deploy decisions. Unsigned pipelines are non-conforming under MEV-Annex:3.2.
@misc{ifo4_glossary_continuous_delivery,
title = {{Continuous Delivery}},
author = {{IFO4 Federation Editorial Board}},
howpublished = {{IFO4 Federation Glossary, slug \texttt{continuous-delivery}}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://ifo4.org/glossary/continuous-delivery},
note = {Category: DevOps; key: ContinuousDelivery}
}Federation members and accredited practitioners may challenge any entry under TGS-002:1.7. Filed challenges are routed to the editorial board, triaged into the revision register, and resolved in writing on the public docket. The slug remains stable through any revision.