Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment are the three key concepts associated with CI/CD. It is collectively referred to as CI\CD, an integral part of modern development designed to reduce errors and increase software velocity during integration and deployment stages.
Earlier with the traditional approach to software development, the team normally spread main releases on time like once every six months. All the bugs to be fixed, improvement in functionality and development of new features etc were gathered for a long time and released once. This was a tedious and manual method, prone to human errors. At the same time, testing every functionality was not possible. As a result, it led enterprises to spend more money to fix problems identified after the product was released.
This is where CI/CD pipeline comes into the picture to make the software development lifecycle quicker and simultaneously perform end-to-end testing. In other words, CI/CD pipeline is a way of delivering apps to consumers more frequently by incorporating automation into the software or application development process.
What is CI/CD Pipeline?
A continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline is a set of procedures that must be followed to deliver a new version of the software. This CI/CD pipeline is a process that majorly focuses on optimising software delivery with the use of the DevOps or site reliability engineering (SRE) method.
Who needs CI/CD Pipeline?
For DevOps teams, one of the best practices to implement is the CI/CD pipeline, which allows them to deliver code changes more frequently and reliably. This process can monitor and automate to optimise the application development process, especially during the integration and testing phases, as well as during delivery and deployment. Although each stage of a CI/CD pipeline can be completed manually, the true value of CI/CD pipelines is achieved through automation.
CI/CD pipeline also known as an agile methodology, set of two concepts that are recommended practice because it allows software development teams to focus on fulfilling business requirements, code quality, security etc as deployment stages are automated.
As new applications need developing code in various platforms and tools, the DevOps team needs a method to integrate and validate the changes.
Why is CI/CD Pipeline needed for business?
A CI/CD pipeline is one of the vital approaches for business to automate the stages of software development. It includes build, test, and deploy phases that makes the life of a DevOps team much easier.
Every CI/CD pipeline will be unique as per the requirements of your organization. With the implementation of a CI/CD pipeline, the software delivery process is automated. The pipeline generates code, runs tests (CI), and deploys a new version of the application in a secure manner (CD). Automated pipelines eliminate manual errors, provide developers with consistent feedback loops, and allow for rapid product iterations.
A CI/CD pipeline may appear to be needless overhead, but it is not. It is essentially an executable specification of the procedures that any software developer must follow to provide a new version of a product.
Implementation of an Effective CI/CD Pipeline:
An Effective CI/CD Pipeline can be implemented to streamline the software development. Robust QA testing techniques are required for CI/CD pipelines. By minimizing the amount of time and effort necessary, these automated testing approaches improve existing manual testing processes.
A CI/CD pipeline effectively automates the delivery of software. Continuous integration is used to build code and execute tests in the pipeline. The revised version of the code is then deployed via an automated process.
The Elements of a CI/CD Pipeline are as follows:
- Build — It is the stage where the software or application is compiled.
- Test — It is the stage where code is tested with automation, saving both time and effort involved in the testing process.
- Release — It is the stage where the software is delivered to the repository.
- Deploy — It is the stage in which the code is deployed to production.
- Validation and Compliance — According to the requirements of the organization, the stages to validate software is defined.
DevOps and software development teams need the CI/CD pipelines to assist with numerous silos or units the most. As it can improve your workflow efficiency and accuracy of the product. For this, you need to implement the right QA procedure that is most effective.
Reliability, Compatibility, Speed and Automation are the four things that make a good CI/CD pipeline for an organization.
The goal of continuous integration and continuous delivery is to offer high-quality apps and code to customers that require continuous testing. Continuous testing is frequently implemented as a set of automated regression, performance, and other tests run through the CI/CD pipeline.
Benefits of CI/CD pipeline:
- Minimizes review time
- Improves customer satisfaction
- Quicker fault detection
- Fewer changes
- Lowers costs
- Reduces human errors
- Improves usability
In the simplest form, Continuous Integration (CI) refers to automation tools to build, test, and merge code easily. Whereas, Continuous Deployment (CD) involves the release of software in less time, with greater frequency and speed.
Therefore, with help of the CI/CD pipeline in the development lifecycle can enhance the software deployment quality and reduce the time to release the new features of the software. This ensures thorough testing of the software often whenever there are any changes in the code and enables developers to identify and fix the bugs before deployment of the software to production.
