There is variation depending on the organization and the software development methodology used, but in a DevOps release cycle, the following major activities generally take place:
- Development
- Integration
- Build and unit testing
- Delivery to staging
- Acceptance testing
- Deployment to production
The following diagram illustrates a typical DevOps release cycle:
![](https://static.packt-cdn.com/products/9781788624060/graphics/assets/72330a42-42cc-4b9b-9759-512811f51768.png)
Three of the main DevOps practices are continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment. These practices revolve around the key activities of a DevOps release cycle, so let's explore them in more detail.