To be clear: data model migrations should still be tested and scripted to the extent possible; there should still be backups in place; there should still be a way to roll back application code and data schema. Just because a team / organization decides not to do zero-downtime updates - which I'm arguing is a completely reasonable choice in a lot of cases - doesn't mean they should abandon other software engineering practices.
Looking through the comments on this post, I see a lot of conflation between "not doing zero-downtime deployments" and "seat-of-your-pants engineering", as though fully orchestrated / containerized blue-green zero-downtime deployments were the One True Way for all teams / organizations / projects, and completely inseparable from other parts of good engineering practice.
Looking through the comments on this post, I see a lot of conflation between "not doing zero-downtime deployments" and "seat-of-your-pants engineering", as though fully orchestrated / containerized blue-green zero-downtime deployments were the One True Way for all teams / organizations / projects, and completely inseparable from other parts of good engineering practice.