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InfiniteSolutions
Delivery Systems

From CI/CD to GitOps

Playbook for adopting GitOps safely across teams.

Why move to GitOps

Traditional CI/CD pipelines rely on hand-crafted scripts, manual approvals, and snowflake environments. GitOps replaces these with declarative desired state, automated reconciliation, and auditable change history—improving deployment frequency, reliability, and compliance.

Prerequisites

  • Infrastructure manifests maintained in Git (Helm, Kustomize, Terraform, or equivalents).
  • Chosen reconciler (ArgoCD, Flux) with production-ready support and observability.
  • Branch protection, code owners, and review workflows to gate changes.
  • Secrets management strategy compatible with Git (sealed secrets, external secret stores).

Core plays

  1. Assess current pipelines. Catalog scripts, manual steps, and environment drift. Identify services or environments best suited for the first GitOps pilot.
  2. Design repository structure. Create environment-specific desired-state repos or directories with clear ownership. Define naming conventions, promotion paths, and directory layout.
  3. Deploy reconciler platform. Install ArgoCD/Flux with SSO, RBAC, and auditing enabled. Configure health checks, sync policies, and notification channels.
  4. Migrate workloads iteratively. Start with non-critical services, convert manifests to declarative form, and let the reconciler manage deployments. Pair with teams to build confidence before handling tier-1 workloads.
  5. Institutionalize governance. Replace manual approvals with pull requests, codify promotion workflows, and ensure drift detection alerts route to owning teams. Document incident response procedures for pausing sync or rolling back.

Operating cadence

  • Daily review of reconcilers’ health dashboards to catch drift or sync failures.
  • Weekly enablement sessions with teams onboarding to GitOps.
  • Quarterly platform review of repository structure, security posture, and tooling upgrades.

Signals you are succeeding

  • Majority of deployments are triggered by Git merges with automated reconciliation.
  • Drift alerts are rare and resolved within agreed SLAs.
  • Deployment frequency and lead time improve without increasing change failure rate.

Supporting assets