We have automated our deployments using https://gocd.org/ https://gocd.org/ (which mostly runs Ansible scripts that do the actual deployment), and we use manual

We have automated our deployments using https://gocd.org/ https://gocd.org/ (which mostly runs Ansible scripts that do the actual deployment), and we use manual approval steps to trigger production deployments. This is a very nice escape hatch for when you want to do manual steps (like manual testing) before a deployment, but you can still rely on the fact that deployment to prod will use the same playbook as deploying to staging did.