Learning Paths

Curated reading paths through the CD Migration Guide, organized by role and goal. Follow a path end-to-end or jump in at the step that matches where your team is today.

  3 minute read  

The CD Migration Guide covers a lot of ground. These paths cut through it by role and goal, giving you a sequenced route from your current pain to a concrete improvement. Each path is self-contained - you do not need to read the whole guide to follow one.

Path 1: Fix our testing strategy

Audience: Developer | Time investment: 4-6 weeks of reading and practice

Your test suite is costing you more than it helps. Runs are slow, failures are random, and bugs still reach production despite high coverage. This path takes you from recognizing the symptoms to understanding the root causes, then gives you the fix guide and the structural changes that prevent recurrence.

  1. Tests Randomly Pass or Fail - confirm the symptom
  2. Slow Test Suites - related pain
  3. Inverted Test Pyramid - root cause
  4. Manual Testing Only - root cause
  5. Testing Fundamentals - fix guide
  6. Testing and Observability Gaps - prevent recurrence
  7. Pipeline Reference Architecture - quality gate placement

Path 2: Build the case for CD adoption

Audience: Manager | Time investment: 1-2 hours

You suspect the team has a delivery problem but need to name it clearly and connect it to evidence before proposing changes. This path helps you identify which symptoms apply to your situation, attach a cost to them, find the root cause in your process, and then point to research-backed capabilities and a concrete starting step.

  1. For Managers - identify your team’s symptoms
  2. Infrequent Releases - quantify the cost
  3. Missing Deployment Pipeline - name the root cause
  4. CAB Approval Gates - address the process gap
  5. DORA Recommended Practices - the research backing
  6. Phase 0 - Assess - start here with your team
  7. Baseline Metrics - measure before you change

Path 3: Migrate a struggling brownfield team

Audience: Tech Lead | Time investment: Ongoing over the migration

Your team has an existing system, existing habits, and real constraints. A greenfield guide will not help you here. This path starts with diagnostic framing, walks through the full phased migration from assess through optimize, and closes with the defect source catalog so you understand what you are structurally preventing as you build each capability.

  1. Start Here - diagnostic framing
  2. Triage Your Symptoms - interactive diagnostic
  3. Brownfield Migration - context for existing systems
  4. Phase 0 - Assess - value stream and baselines
  5. Phase 1 - Foundations - trunk, tests, build
  6. Phase 2 - Pipeline - automation path
  7. Phase 3 - Optimize - flow and metrics
  8. Systemic Defect Sources - understand what you are preventing

Path 4: Adopt agentic CD practices

Audience: Developer or Tech Lead | Time investment: 2-4 hours of reading, then ongoing practice

AI agents writing and submitting code are a new kind of contributor with a different failure profile. This path explains what changes with agents in the loop, walks through the constraint model and workflow architecture, and then covers the concrete setup, session discipline, and quality gates needed to keep agent output safe to ship.

  1. Agentic CD Overview - what changes with AI agents
  2. Agent Delivery Contract - the constraint model
  3. Agentic Architecture - skills, agents, hooks
  4. Agent Configuration - concrete setup
  5. Small-Batch Sessions - discipline for agent work
  6. Pipeline Enforcement - quality gates for agent output
  7. Pitfalls and Metrics - what goes wrong and how to measure

Already in progress?

If your team is partway through a migration, jump in at the relevant phase: