Puppet module change management - best practices?

[llowder]

All,

I am currently trying to find a better way to do change management for my puppet code.

Currently we have a single Master with two environments (test and prod). Each module has it's own git repo, as does our node defs and our hiera data repository.

The 'test' environment is used to control the servers used by our devs and QA team, and prod are the actual production servers.

Our current method is to make the changes in test, committing as we do, and using branches for major changes. Once we are satisfied, we then push the repo to a remote git server (merging first if needed) then go over to prod and pull the the repo.

This works well for the most part, but there have been some unintended side effects, and there is no enforcement.

Are there any established best practices? What are some options that the community uses?

We've considered a few other options, such as continuing to use git for the modules, but using something else for the hiera repo and the node defs, possibly even something like TurnOver.

Thoughts, comments and suggestions are very much appreciated.