Explain the stages that new functionality goes through from development to deployment in production.

The new functionality goes through several key stages from development to release into production:

1. Planning and requirements analysis — defining goals, functionality, and success criteria.
2. Development — writing code, creating new features, or modifying existing ones.
3. Testing — verifying functionality, including unit tests, integration, and system tests.
4. Code review and quality check — colleagues review code for errors and compliance with standards.
5. Build and integration — merging changes into the main codebase, building artifacts.
6. Deployment to testing/staging environment — deploying for broader testing and verification.
7. Acceptance testing (UAT) — verifying functionality by end-users or clients.
8. Release and deployment to production — releasing functionality for end-users.
9. Monitoring and support — tracking performance, fixing bugs.

Each stage can be automated using CI/CD systems, which speeds up and simplifies the release process.