What is the difference between Deployment and Delivery?

Deployment is the process of installing a new version of an application or service into the target environment (for example, testing, staging, production). It is a separate, atomic step.

Delivery (Continuous Delivery) is an approach that ensures software can be released into production at any time. It includes automating the entire release pipeline: building, testing, deploying to testing and staging environments. Production deployment can be performed manually.

Main differences:

Characteristic	Deployment	Delivery
Scope	A specific deployment step	The entire process from code commit to readiness for production deployment
Goal	Install the application into the environment	Make the application ready for release at any time
Automation	Can be manual or automated	High level of automation throughout the pipeline
Frequency	Can be infrequent	Designed for frequent releases
Decision-making	Happens at the end of the Delivery/Deployment process	Happens at each stage of the pipeline, culminating in a decision to deploy to prod