1. CI/CD tools: collaborative GitLab/GitHub, or gate-heavy Gerrit/Jenkins?
  2. Approval flow: how many boss sign-offs does a merge request (MR) need?
  3. Environment isolation: separate Dev/Test/Prod environments, and can you switch/deploy with one click?
  4. Deployment chain: from code to user-visible, how many steps? Automated or manual?
  5. Monitoring: do alerts point to root cause, or are engineers digging through logs at night?
  6. Config management: centralized with canary/gradual release, or scattered across code with manual edits?
  7. Test coverage: a reliable automated “immune system,” or treat bugs as features and let users test in production?
  8. Rollback: when production blows up, can you roll back within 5 minutes, or stay up all night with the team?