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DevOps Platform, CI/CD, and Observability

Purpose​

This section documents how the portfolio web app is built, tested, released, deployed, and observed as a production-like service.

It demonstrates:

  • disciplined CI/CD pipeline design and quality gates
  • environment strategy (preview/staging/production patterns)
  • deployment and rollback mechanisms
  • observability practices (logs/metrics/traces) aligned with incident response

Scope​

In scope​

  • CI/CD pipeline definition and rationale
  • artifact strategy and provenance expectations
  • environment promotion model and rollback approach
  • infrastructure and hosting configuration (public-safe)
  • observability: logging, metrics, alerting, dashboards

Out of scope​

  • product narrative (belongs in 00-portfolio/)
  • deep security posture (belongs in 40-security/)
  • runbook procedures (belongs in 50-operations/), except as references

CI/CD documentation requirements​

Every pipeline must be documented with:

  • stages (lint, test, build, scan, deploy)
  • what failures mean and how to respond
  • required checks to merge
  • artifact outputs and retention strategy
  • environment promotion and rollback logic

Treat CI as an operational system:

  • if it breaks, delivery breaks
  • if it is unclear, quality and security drift

Even for a portfolio, document environments as if you are running a real service:

  • Preview: per-branch builds for review and validation
  • Production: stable deployment target with controlled release process
  • Optional Staging: if you want an additional gate for ops/security validation

Document:

  • who can deploy
  • what triggers deployment
  • how rollback works
  • what “safe deploy” means (validation checks)

Observability and incident readiness​

Observability documentation must cover:

  • what is logged and why
  • which metrics indicate health
  • what alerts exist and their thresholds (public-safe)
  • where dashboards are documented (even if screenshots are used)

Validation and expected outcomes​

DevOps docs are “correct” when:

  • a reviewer can understand delivery flow end-to-end
  • deployments are reproducible and reversible
  • operational signals exist and map to incident response procedures

Failure modes and troubleshooting​

  • Flaky CI: unclear failures → document triage steps and stabilization plan.
  • Undocumented deploy steps: hidden manual actions → capture them and automate.
  • No rollback: every deploy must have a rollback plan or explicit risk acceptance.

References​

Any change impacting deployment, runtime configuration, or observability must trigger updates in:

  • runbooks and IR procedures (50-operations/)
  • security controls (40-security/) if controls rely on pipeline enforcement
  • release notes (00-portfolio/release-notes/) for significant changes