Continuous integration is a practice in software development that involves continuous testing of the underlying code of an application and its upgrades as they come. Overall, the goal of CI is to ensure speed in the release process as the team constantly tests and fixes bugs on the go during development, thus ensuring quality.
Continuous development is a step beyond the CI that involves speedily delivering new builds into the hands of users. So, this approach is used to minimize the extra efforts and risks associated with releasing applications with their new features. In the CD practice, developers ensure that changes made to the application’s underlying code are ready for release. Updates are smaller and delivered to users more frequently. This also helps get quick and frequent user feedback, which is corrected and delivered quickly in the next update.
CI/CD is a systemic activity that requires careful planning and synergy among the individuals and teams involved. Hence to successfully plan and implement the CI/CD workflow there are necessary steps to be taken, the vitals of which are to:
When CI/CD is adopted, faster results are guaranteed. So, developers can easily deliver their applications to market and expect quicker feedback. Issues are resolved immediately and re-launched, eliminating the waiting time.
This also increases productivity levels because of the automation of repetitive tasks and their deployment. With the integration of test automation tools, the pipelines can also be automated. Additionally, the team of developers are now able to focus on building and implementing strategy that would quickly and conveniently deliver and give more value to the company.
After weighing the benefits of CI/CD delivery, it is now time to assess the project requirements. Activities here include budget analysis and examining areas to be allotted as well as other possibilities.
Once this is done, it’s now time to analyze the team. Ensuring the team has a membership that is able to work together to resolve issues proactively is key to the success of the project. The team leaders should be competent enough to understand the importance of the concept of CI/CD to the project at hand.
Monitoring progress and analyzing the project continuous improvements is very important in every CI/CD project. This is where key performance indicators (KPIs) are needed. Some KPIs in CD/CI delivery model include:
Key Performance indicators sometimes seem to steer towards a particular direction and would require a balance using other indicators. Stability index plays this role.
This is measured to report code duplication, memory leaks and other security loopholes. The speed and ease with which a company makes and adjusts to code changes gives them a competitive advantage. When DevOps is implemented in a team, codes can be shipped about 30 times faster, increasing the rate of deployments to about 8000 times faster (according to Puppets lab survey).
The sprint factor is a strong one that should not be overlooked by any business. Positive business results are measured by analyzing the tests performed in a particular sprint or even the tests done in all the sprints. When each sprint test indicates considerable progress, then it’s a success indicator.
These factors among others will ensure that application features are constantly added efficiently and effectively to your software using CI/CD. Our team of developers at Charter Global work in synergy. We abide by all the tenets of CI/CD to ensure quality, speed, and mass deployment of applications to end users.
At Charter Global, we maximize the potential of your IT investment.
One Glenlake Parkway, Suite 525, Atlanta, GA 30328 Phone: (888)326 9933 Fax: (770)326 9922 Email: info@charterglobal.com
