What Is a Rollforward?

A rollforward is a recovery strategy where, instead of rolling back to the prior version, the team ships a new version that fixes the problem and moves forward. It suits situations where the old version is also unacceptable, such as after an irreversible data migration. With fast, reliable CI/CD, rolling forward can be as quick as rolling back.

Why it matters

Rollback is not always possible: a forward database migration may make the previous code incompatible. In those cases rolling forward with a hotfix is the only safe path. It depends on a fast pipeline, since the fix must reach production quickly to keep recovery time low.

Related concepts

• Alternative to rollback when reverting is unsafe
• Often required after forward-only migrations
• Fast CI/CD keeps rollforward recovery time low

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