Accelerate the CI-Continuous Integration / CD-Continuous Delivery Pipeline

The development of agile and the demand it’s putting on QA groups for quicker conveyance cycles is constraining numerous to supplant their more established, solid advancement models with a more streamlined process. In any case, unavoidable strategies, for example, manual testing, are shielding groups from embracing adaptable practices like persistent coordination or constant conveyance and achieving genuine dexterity. 

The objective of the Continuous Integration and continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline is to empower groups to discharge a consistent stream of programming refreshes into creation to stimulate discharge cycles, bring down expenses, and decrease the dangers related with improvement.

Continuous Integration vs. Continuous Delivery

Continuous integration (CI) is a software development practice in which small adjustments to the underlying code in an application are tested every time a team member makes changes. Continuous integration plans to accelerate the discharge procedure by empowering groups to discover and settle bugs prior in the improvement cycle and empowering more grounded joint effort between developers– making it a crucial practice for agile teams.

Historically, developers worked separately on parts of an application and would later integrate their code with the rest of the team’s manually. Depending on the when the next build occurred, it could take days, or even weeks, to see if the new code would break anything. This isolated process often lead to developers duplicating their code creation efforts, developing with different coding strategies, and creating many hard to find and fix bugs. In a CI environment, developers merge their code changes in a shared repository several times a day so that it can be committed, tested, and validated continuously. Implementing CI speeds up the development process and ensures that bugs are caught earlier in the cycle.

Continuous delivery (CD) is the process of getting new builds into the hands of users as quickly as possible. It is the natural next step beyond CI and is an approach used to minimize the risks associated with releasing software and new features. Releasing software updates is notoriously painful and time-consuming. Continuous delivery reduces the risks and efforts associated with this process by ensuring that every change made to the underlying code of an application is releasable – meaning each update is smaller and can be delivered to users more frequently. By making releases less dramatic events that can be performed on-demand whenever new code is ready, teams can make their development process more efficient, less risky, and can get feedback from users quicker. If issues are found in production, they can be squashed quickly by simply rolling out the next update.

The CI/CD Pipeline

As more software development teams aim to meet the growing demand for faster release cycles and increased software quality, many are looking to implement a continuous development pipeline to streamline their process. Adopting CI/ CD practices enable teams to adapt their software on-demand to meet user feedback, market shifts, and any adjustments to the overarching business strategy (i.e., changes to the requirements).

While there is no definitive CI/CD pipeline structure, it is typically broken down into the following stages:

1. Commit & Build: When developers are finished making changes to an application, they commit their code to a shared repository which will then integrate their snippet with the central code base. The piece of software, or the new feature, is then built from the extracted code and unit tested. CI plays an essential role in streamlining this process by automating each step after the code is written.
2. Automated Testing: Once the new piece of software is developed, it needs to be built and then thoroughly tested to ensure it meets all the initial requirements. There are various testing methodologies that can be used to ensure an application looks and behaves as expected and covers everything from functional tests to performance tests. During this stage, it’s essential to test the entire system in environments that are similar to the production environment because the success of the software depends on it working in the environments your end users are accessing it on.
3. Deployment: In the final stage, the built piece of software is rolled out into production. CD requires this process to be automated, which ensures a reliable delivery to users.

Continuous integration and delivery means continuous quality. With products such as TestLeft, you can create and run automated tests right from your IDE, like Visual Studio, IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse, enabling a seamless workflow with your continuous integration and continuous delivery process. Once tests are executed, you can then track changes, merge modifications and restore previous project versions or schedule, provision, and frequently deploy builds for continuous delivery.

There are five aspects of a continuous development process you’ll benefit from by transitioning to the CI/CD pipeline:

• Faster Release Cycles: Speeding up the build and deploy cycle will allow you and your team to get new features into production quicker, meaning you can get your product into the hands of your consumers faster.
• Reduced Risk: The ultimate goal of a continuous delivery process is to make each release a less-dramatic and painless experience for both the QA teams and customers. By releasing new updates or features continuously, you reduce the risk of bugs ending up in production and can resolve any found deficiencies faster.
• Lower Costs: Adopting a continuous development model will lower your costs by eliminating many of the fixed costs associated with building and testing changes to the application. For example, automated environment provisioning will reduce the costs associated with maintaining your own test infrastructure. Parallel testing will cut down on the number of machines you need to run your tests on. By continuously committing your code, you’ll spend less time (and therefore money) on fixing bugs.
• Higher Quality Products: A major fear of implementing the CI/CD pipeline is foregoing quality for speed, but this isn’t the case. Continuous integration enables stronger collaboration between developers, meaning bugs are found and fixed faster earlier in the development process. Running automated regression and parallel tests will improve test coverage, ensuring your application is bug-free and works across a wider range of environments. Continuously delivering smaller updates to your software will make most changes (and bugs) undetectable to the end user, resulting in happier customers.
• Better Business Advantage: Moving to a continuous development model gives your team the flexibility to make alterations to your software on-the-go to meet new market trends and user needs. You’ll be able to meet rapidly changing demands and will turn your release process into a competitive advantage.