A pathway to continuous integration/continuous delivery

CI/CD can be pictured as a pipeline (refer to the following figure), where new code is submitted on one end, tested over a series of stages (source, build, staging, and production), and then published as production-ready code. If your organization is new to CI/CD it can approach this pipeline in an iterative fashion. This means that you should start small, and iterate at each stage so that you can understand and develop your code in a way that will help your organization grow.

CI/CD pipeline

Each stage of the CI/CD pipeline is structured as a logical unit in the delivery process. In addition, each stage acts as a gate that vets a certain aspect of the code. As the code progresses through the pipeline, the assumption is that the quality of the code is higher in the later stages because more aspects of it continue to be verified. Problems uncovered in an early stage stop the code from progressing through the pipeline. Results from the tests are immediately sent to the team, and all further builds and releases are stopped if software does not pass the stage.

These stages are suggestions. You can adapt the stages based on your business need. Some stages can be repeated for multiple types of testing, security, and performance. Depending on the complexity of your project and the structure of your teams, some stages can be repeated several times at different levels. For example, the end product of one team can become a dependency in the project of the next team. This means that the first team’s end product is subsequently staged as an artifact in the next team’s project.

The presence of a CI/CD pipeline will have a large impact on maturing the capabilities of your organization. The organization should start with small steps and not try to build a fully mature pipeline, with multiple environments, many testing phases, and automation in all stages at the start. Keep in mind that even organizations that have highly mature CI/CD environments still need to continuously improve their pipelines.

Building a CI/CD-enabled organization is a journey, and there are many destinations along the way. The next section discusses a possible pathway that your organization could take, starting with continuous integration through the levels of continuous delivery.