Steady Delivery With Small Batches

Teams usually underestimate the coordination cost of large releases.

When a change set becomes too broad, review quality drops, QA becomes less targeted, and rollback options become less clear. A better default is to keep batches small enough that everyone involved can still reason about the full blast radius.

The practical rule

If a feature cannot be explained in one short paragraph and validated in one focused test plan, it is probably too large for a single batch.

Small batches are not about going slower. They are about keeping feedback loops short so you can move continuously without hidden risk.

What changed for us

• Planning moved from month-sized tickets to week-sized increments.
• Every increment had a narrow success metric.
• Releases happened on a regular schedule instead of waiting for perfect completeness.

The result was fewer surprises in production and better confidence from both engineering and product stakeholders.