title: How is the deployment process handled in scrum methodology?
body: <p>We are developing a complex system using scrum methodology with 1 week sprints and a team of 6 developers.</p>
  
  <p>We continuously update the source code on every developer machine when the changes are tested and integrated on the development branches, and the developers daily integrate the changes to a test common server.</p>
  
  <p>But the production system is critical enough for any issue or downtime to cause much $ lost, and the deployment process is slow, hard and delicate. Even if the system changes are tested and even deployed to a test server, sometimes problems arise when we try to publish the whole week progress as a lot. Thus, we have chose to have a previous deployment process which happens after all the week development is completed and deployed to the test server. We run full feature tests on the whole week changes on the test server, then publish the week work lot to a preproduction server, then sometimes everything goes fine but sometimes some new problems arise on the deployment process or the published changes, then we plan the highly delicate production process and execute it on the next night we can, avoiding any downtime for the customer work.</p>
  
  <p>Now, we are having discussions with the customer since he defends this is not scrum because he isn't gettint the sprint result on the scrum day, but three days later. But obviously we can't start the pre-release and release process until the sprint completes totally - so, next day - and then the system complexity and criticality forces us to secure the deployment process to the top, and the customer production usage requires also some special operation scheduling.</p>
  
  <p>Are we working against the scrum guidelines? Where is the deployment process on the scrum methodology? Is scrum appropiate for this project?</p>