Every high‑growth team eventually feels the pain of unmanaged configuration drift: a sandbox that no longer looks like production, a last‑minute fix that breaks revenue‑critical flows, a “small tweak” that wipes out weeks of work. If your daily release cadence feels like walking a tight‑rope, you’re not alone. After analyzing hundreds of Salto implementations and mapping them to industry metrics such as DORA’s Deployment Frequency and Mean Time to Restore, we distilled a clear, five‑step journey that any organization can follow to reach safe and efficient delivery.

Take our quick self‑assessment, find your current level, and walk away with an actionable playbook tailored to your processes.

Why configuration management maturity matters

• Release speed vs. stability – manual releases limit the number of changes you can ship without incurring sleepless nights.
• Compliance at scale – as soon as auditors ask for “who changed what, when, and why,” ad‑hoc processes collapse.

Teams that move from the lowest to highest level in our model typically see:

• 2‑3× increase in deployment frequency
• 70 % reduction in change‑related incidents
• 4× faster MTTR (thanks to version‑controlled rollback)

The 5 levels at a glance

What progression looks like

1. Fragile → Resilient
   Add automated snapshots before every deploy and run diff‑based impact analysis.
   Quick win: Enable Salto’s Compare view to visualize exactly what will change.‍
2. Resilient → Systematic
   Stop treating sandboxes as side projects. Keep them continuously aligned with production and use one‑click deploy pipelines to cut out hand‑copying.‍
3. Systematic → Mature
   Put every change behind a Git pull request. Peer review and approval gates create an immutable audit trail and shared ownership.‍
4. Mature → Optimized
   Let CI/CD do the boring parts. Automated tests, branch‑based environments, and multi‑app pipelines mean you can ship confidently several times a day.

‍

Take the assessment

Answer 11 multiple‑choice questions about how you plan, build, test, approve, and deploy configuration changes. The report you receive immediately after submitting includes:

• Your current level and how you rank against peers
• The 2–3 highest‑leverage actions to reach the next level
• A value realization plan that will be handy for leadership buy‑in

Ready to level‑up?

No matter where you start, Salto gives you the guard‑rails to move faster with less risk. Take the self‑assessment now and discover exactly what to tackle next.