The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods TCG067: Progressive Delivery: Shipping Software is Just the Beginning with Adam Zimman
Jan 28, 2026
Adam Zimman, author and VC advisor who helped shape progressive delivery at companies like GitHub and LaunchDarkly. He traces software delivery’s shift from waterfall to DevOps. He explains progressive delivery practices like gradual rollouts, feature flags, and measuring adoption. He outlines the Four A's framework for enabling builders and talks about when to build vs buy tooling.
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Separate Deployment From Release
- Deployment does not equal release and separating them reduces user disruption.
- Progressive delivery adds a user adoption loop to DevOps to control rollout speed.
One Build, Many User Experiences
- Progressive delivery keeps a single build while toggling behavior per user cohort.
- That reduces build/version complexity and simplifies diagnosing user issues.
Treat Flags As A Single Source Of Truth
- Use a feature management platform as a system of record for flags and user experiences.
- Surface flag state to support so you can know exactly what a user experienced.
