From my whitepaper: “How to use Scrum and Continuous Delivery to build the right thing” with thanks to Jez Humble for feedback.

Definition of terms

Deployed

“Deployed”: A technical concern that applies in the domain of the team and means the functionality is introduced in Production.

Released

“Released”: A business term that defines functionality being available to an end-user.

“Deployed” doesn’t necessarily mean “Released”.

“Production Ready” = A product Increment that is “Done” and potentially releasable to the end-user.
“Ready for Release” is a synonym to Production Ready.

The basics

Do you know the difference between Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment?

“Continuous Integration”: A technical practice where every product change should trigger an event where you automatically rebuild, integrate and test your whole product.

“Continuous Deployment”: Additionally to “Continuous Integration, every product change gets automatically deployed to Production.

“Continuous Delivery”: Keeping a system “Production Ready” for release at all times during development. This does not involve stopping and making a special effort to create a releasable product.

Thanks to Jez Humble for feedback on this.