Postdeploy

Postdeploy is a term used in software deployment to describe tasks that are executed after a release has been deployed to a target environment. The exact usage can vary by organization, but it generally refers to the phase that prepares the system for operation with the new version.

Typical postdeploy tasks include applying database migrations, seeding data, refreshing caches, updating search indexes, and restarting services or worker processes. Additional duties can involve enabling or adjusting feature flags, updating configuration files, performing post-deployment health checks or smoke tests, and warming up application caches. Teams may also use postdeploy steps to perform cleanup of old releases, rotate logs, or initialize external integrations.

Implementation and scope: Postdeploy work is commonly implemented as a dedicated script or a set of commands invoked by the deployment pipeline. Many workflows provide a postdeploy hook or job that runs automatically after the deployment stage. The exact order, success criteria, and failure handling are defined by the deployment process, and in practice postdeploy tasks are often designed to be idempotent to support retries. Alerting or automated rollback plans are typically considered if postdeploy tasks fail.

Relationship to other phases: Postdeploy is distinct from predeploy tasks (such as building artifacts) and from the primary deployment actions themselves. In some pipelines, postdeploy tasks may differ between environments (for example staging versus production) to accommodate data migrations, external service constraints, or environment-specific configurations.

See also: Release phase, Database migration, CI/CD pipeline.