This principle advises to separate the application build, the deployment, and the run processes. This is a well-known approach to Java enterprise developers. Application binaries are built, deployed, and run in separate steps. Software or configuration changes happen in the source code or in the deployment step, respectively, and not directly in production. The deployment step brings application binaries and potential configuration together. Well-defined change and release management processes keep the integrity of the enterprise software.

For the vast majority of software projects, it is common practice to separate these steps and orchestrate stages in a Continuous Integration server. This is necessary to ensure reliability and reproducibility. Chapter 6, Application Development Workflows covers this topic in depth.