Canary Releases

In software development, canary releases are a technique to reduce the risk of introducing changes in production by making new software features available to a limited selection of users ahead of a wider release.

There are different strategies one can apply, for example:

• Only making new features available to internal staff, but not regular customers.
• Allowing users to opt-in to new features or providing a “beta release channel”.
• Releasing features to a small percentage of users and gradually ramping up the number.