At Impact, we’ve been committed to delivering the best possible experience to our users. Over the years, our traditional release schedule has helped us ship meaningful updates and improvements. However, as technology evolves and expectations grow, we see an opportunity to enhance how we deliver value to you. That’s why we’re excited to announce a major shift: a continuous delivery model. This change is about improving innovation and overall quality of our product in a much quicker cycle. Let’s dive into what this means for you and how we’re making it happen.
Why & What We’re Changing
Our current release process has served us okay, but it’s not without limitations. We’ve currently had what to you all appears as a weekly release cycle. With that being said, it’s really a biweekly release cycle because of our systems internally. This release cycle has been the same whether it was feature development work or bug fixes. The exception has been hot fixes (reserved for critical issues). This means that the amazing work that our developers have done has taken longer to get to you than we’d like.
Effective immediately, we’ll implement a continuous delivery approach. Continuous delivery is a modern software development approach where updates are released in smaller, incremental changes rather than large, periodic launches. Think of it as a steady stream of improvements rather than occasional big waves. In the old model, you would wait weeks, at best, or months, at worst, for a bundle of features, fixes, and updates. With continuous delivery, you’ll see these changes as soon as they’re ready—keeping the product fresh and responsive to your needs.
What You Can Expect/Benefits
This transition is designed with you in mind. Here’s a rundown of the details:
- Bug fixes will be released and visible in production immediately once the work has been completed and changes have been merged. (This is a huge improvement; yay!)
- Changes that include new or updated feature work will be released throughout each week, but behind a feature flag to ensure that nothing is visible until it’s ready.
- All of the internal processes for automated testing, quality assurance testing, manual user acceptance testing, and accessibility auditing will remain.
- Only once all internal processes are done and approved will the feature flag be removed, so that new/updated features are visible to you. This ensures the utmost quality and avoids any preventable defects.
- As of now, we anticipate removing feature flags once per week, so the new/updated features will be visible on a weekly basis.
- Release notes will continue to be published and shared on a weekly basis and will include any new and updated features, as well as bug fixes, since the previously published release notes.
As a side note, we are excited to announce that we will now actively be using the Known Issues page of the Instructure Community to publish issues that you all have reported that are open or pending and can’t be resolved immediately! This should help bring awareness to you as to what is in the works and in what stage, as well as save you time, so that you don’t have to spend time investigating and/or trying to make something work that is a known issue.
In conclusion, we’re really excited about these changes and what it means for Impact, us, and most importantly, you. The benefits include:
- Faster Access to Features: No more waiting for major updates. You’ll get new features as soon as they’re ready.
- Improved Stability: Smaller, incremental changes mean fewer disruptions and a smoother experience.
- Timely Fixes: Bugs can be addressed and resolved more quickly.
- Greater Transparency: Regular, smaller updates make it easier to track what’s new and provide feedback.
Call to Action & Next Steps
With every new process, there may be kinks. But please know that we’re committed to making this transition as smooth as possible, and we’re here to support you every step of the way. Here’s what we’d like for you to do to ensure that you maximize your Impact experience:
- Stay on top of Release Notes either by subscribing to them to receive them via email and/or clicking on the link from the in-app notifications in the Impact Dashboard.
- Subscribe to the Impact Product Blog updates for more information as we evolve.
- Subscribe to and reference the Impact Known Issues area of the Community.
- Feel free to ask any questions and/or provide feedback or suggestions about our new release process below, as we’d love to hear from you!
- If/when you have an issue that’s not listed on the Known Issues page, please reach out to Support.
This move to continuous delivery is a reflection of our commitment to you. We’re dedicated to delivering faster, more reliable updates that make a real difference in your experience. Thank you for your trust and partnership as we take this exciting step forward. Together, we’re building something incredible!
