# Can you deploy in one step?

Published 2 December 2025

[Originally posted on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7401633143939575808/)

Conversation on April 1:

— *When is your release*?

— *April 15*.

Conversation on May 1:

— *When is your release*?

— *May 15*.

— *But it was supposed to be April 15* 🤔

— *When we tried to release, we discovered that our solution could not be deployed to the required platform. Now we’re rebuilding it*.

I see **two to three cases like this every year**.

Three months of work — and no one checked whether the solution could be deployed at all.

A simple Hello World deployed in week one would have saved them months.

Technical people naturally tend to focus mostly on the code; that’s what is expected of them. However, if you **combine engineering thinking with a managerial one**, the results will be strikingly better.

Let me give an example.

Early in my career, Joel Spolsky influenced me a lot.

His radical question still matters: “Can you make deployment in one step?”

He believed deployment must be so automated that anyone can press a button and ship the product.

This forces you to build systems that make it impossible to deploy garbage 🗑️

It’s about **faster iterations**.

Automation shortens the path from idea → result → feedback.

Fast iterations are a managerial idea — about shortening the managerial cycle: the time from task to feedback. Here it is combined with an engineering process.

And when you combine engineering + managerial thinking,

you become more valuable.

💰 And that always converts into money: company profit and your salary.