We have to take into account a few things when planning a canary deployment:

Stages: how many users do we send to the canary at first, and in how many stages.

Duration: how long do we plan to run the canary? Canary deployments usually run for minutes or hours. Canary releases are different, as we must wait for enough clients to be updated before we can assess the results. This can happen over several days or even weeks.

Metrics: what metrics we should record to analyze progress, including application performance and error reports. Well-chosen parameters are essential for a successful canary deployment.

Evaluation: what criteria we’ll use to determine the canary is a success.