Metrics-Driven Guarded Releases

Releasing new features is a high-stakes process for engineering teams. Each release brings the risk of errors and bugs, which can negatively impact users and create lasting damage to the business. This is especially true for AI-driven releases, where the complexity and unpredictability of AI models significantly amplifies the risks. 

The key to managing this complexity lies in making every critical release a Guarded Release that is tied to metrics. Guarded Releases provide precise, release-specific monitoring that targets only impacted users, enabling early detection of issues missed by traditional APM tools. 

By tying feature deployments to critical metrics, teams can track, analyze, and automate rollbacks for errors in real time, improving observability and enhancing user trust.

This guide walks you through:

• Why Guarded Releases are a must for modern development teams who care about minimizing deployment risks and maximizing agility.
• How to get started by incorporating common engineering metrics like latency and error rate. 
• How to enhance the value of Guarded Releases by expanding to critical business metrics such as user engagement and customer satisfaction.