The Challenge
A SaaS company providing business strategy and operational consulting tools had outgrown their deployment process. Actually, "process" is generous—deployments meant a developer manually copying folders to an EC2 instance and restarting IIS application pools by hand.
Each deployment took 20-30 minutes of focused attention. There was no version control integration, no automated testing, no audit trail, and no rollback capability. The founder was the only person who knew the full deployment procedure.
For a company helping other businesses optimize their operations, their own development workflow was held together with manual steps and institutional knowledge.
Our Approach
The goal wasn't just faster deployments—it was building a foundation for professional software development practices. That meant source control, automated testing, security controls, and compliance-ready audit trails.
We started by documenting their existing deployment process, then designed a modern CI/CD pipeline that would handle everything automatically.
The Solution
We implemented a complete DevOps foundation using GitHub and self-hosted runners:
Source Control & Security
- Migrated codebase to GitHub with proper repository structure
- Implemented branch protection requiring code reviews before merge
- Configured secrets management for API keys and credentials
- Set up vulnerability scanning on pull requests
- Established IAM policies and access controls for AWS resources
CI Pipeline (Continuous Integration)
- GitHub Actions workflow triggered on every pull request
- Automated unit testing before merge approval
- Build verification to catch compilation errors early
- Artifact creation with semantic versioning
- Automated release tagging on successful builds
CD Pipeline (Continuous Deployment)
- Self-hosted GitHub Actions runner on EC2 instance
- Automated deployment workflow on merge to main
- IIS application pool management (disable, deploy, enable)
- Folder path updates and configuration management
- Zero-downtime deployment with health checks
Compliance & Audit
- Complete audit trail of every deployment
- Git history showing who changed what and when
- Automated documentation of releases and versions
- Rollback capability through versioned artifacts
The Results
The transformation went beyond deployment speed.
Operational Improvements:
- Deployment time dropped from 20-30 minutes to under 5 minutes
- Deployments now happen automatically on merge—no manual steps
- Any team member can trigger a deployment, not just the founder
- Failed deployments are caught before they reach production
Security & Compliance:
- Every code change is reviewed before merge
- Credentials are properly secured, not hardcoded
- Complete audit trail for compliance requirements
- Vulnerability scanning catches issues proactively
Developer Experience:
- Confidence to deploy frequently without fear
- Clear process that new team members can follow
- Automated testing catches bugs before customers do
- Version history makes debugging production issues easier
For a company that advises others on operational excellence, their development workflow now reflects the standards they help clients achieve.