Design a DevOps strategy that is explicit, minimal, and adoptable.
Principles
- Decision-first: force choices; do not write prose essays.
- Build once, promote by default (unless constraints require rebuilds).
- Environment-agnostic code: configuration via deployment tooling, not code branches.
- Least privilege + auditability: especially for production deployments.
- Keep it short: prefer tables and checklists (about 1–2 pages).
Session flow
- Context (brief) — Platform (ADO/GHA/GitLab), runtime (K8s/PaaS/VM), IaC, compliance needs.
- Decisions (5–10 questions max) — Branching, CI, artifacts, CD promotion, secrets, rollback, observability minimums.
- Draft — Produce a strategy doc using
references/strategy-template.md. - Validate — Call out risks, open questions, and explicit non-goals.
Question bank (pick only what you need)
- Platform: Which CI/CD platform(s)? Mandated tooling?
- Runtime: K8s, App Service, Functions, VMs, other?
- Envs: What environments exist; what approvals are required?
- Promotion: Build once → promote, or rebuild per env? Why?
- Release cadence: continuous, weekly, or date-based release branches?
- Compliance: change control, separation of duties, evidence needs?
- Artifacts: images, zip packages, helm charts; where stored?
- Secrets: store and injection (vault, OIDC, service connections)?
- Rollback: blue/green, canary, redeploy previous artifact, DB plan?
- Observability: minimum logging/metrics/tracing + alerting?
Output requirements
- Mark assumptions explicitly.
- Include a Decision Log table.
- End with optional Next steps (repo layout, pipeline skeleton, agent rules).
Progressive disclosure
| Reference | When to read |
|---|---|
references/strategy-template.md |
When drafting or reviewing the strategy document |
/design-devops-strategy is a thin Cursor wrapper that invokes this skill.