Keys to high-quality service releases at Okta
Okta’s product release cadence
At Okta, there are 12 monthly releases for General Availability of new features and there are weekly releases for Early Availability of new features, security patches, bug fixes, and non-customer-facing backend changes.
Every release train spans a three-week window wherein the deployment to the Dev-Test environment completes during week 1, Preview during week 2, and Production during week 3. This process allows us to collect feedback from customers and monitor for issues prior to moving on to the next environment.
Okta’s QA Core team manages and maintains a critical suite of Continuous Verification synthetic tests known as Post Deployment Verification. The Post Deployment Verification tests covering critical end-user scenarios are run after every deployment to every environment. These tests must pass in order to certify deployment completeness. Dashboard monitoring is another key component for signing off the deployment. Incident management processes are in place in the case of Post Deployment Verification test failures or operational monitoring dashboard errors.
Post Deployment Verification
The Post Deployment Verification tests are consistent across Dev-Test, Preview, and Production environments validating the same critical end-user scenarios. Single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, Active Directory, LDAP directory integrations, Okta’s Integrated Windows Authentication, and on-premises provisioning directory integration are a subset of the functionalities tested on every environment. Major issues that could cause a hotfix or rollback are identified immediately, thereby providing signals before customers inform us about broken functionality.
At Okta, we know that our service is critical to our customers and their end users. Post Deployment Verification tests play a crucial role in providing confidence for shipping high-quality releases at Okta. It allows our engineering teams to release on a rapid cadence while ensuring that critical functionality doesn’t regress release over release. These tests will evolve as Okta’s product offerings expand, helping ship amazing quality products in the times to come. To learn more, read An Insider Look: How Okta Builds and Runs Scalable Infrastructure.
