The Role of CI/CD Pipelines

Currently, the industry around coding is becoming increasingly competitive. Developers are getting faster, not just in producing code but in releasing products. The demand for things like mobile apps is continuously growing, but only for high quality products. On top of that, these products are expected to grow and be updated with time, to maintain their quality.

Fortunately, there are lots of tools to stay competitive in such a market. These range vastly but an important one is CI/CD pipelines. CI/CD stands for continuous integration, delivery, and deployment. Each serves a specific purpose but the general intent is automation. Humans are becoming notoriously bad at doing just about anything in comparison to machines and AI.

In terms of development, humans are still very vital. CI/CD comes in to instead reduce a lot of human labor. Continuous integration streamlines different coding branches into one comprehensive repository. Continuous delivery uploads this code for bug fixing typically, and deployment is when it’s released for production. Each of these steps are important in different ways, but they all effectively reduce busy work.

Currently 35% of developers have some form of CI/CD onboarded at their business. The more professional and elite a developer the more likely there will be some form of CI/CD integrated. Currently this helps most prominently with release times and bug fixing. Code moves down the chain quickly and in a more cohesive collection. The code is also more easily and regularly tested with CI/CD in place. 

Even beyond the scope of the first release, integrated CI/CD allows developers to continually update their products. Today it is becoming more and more common to release programs and apps with the intent of continuous updates. Now that’s not to say that the program should be unfinished at release, instead it should be updated for retention. People are more likely now than ever to uninstall and abandon new programs. Developers need to both gain and retain attention across time.

On the more micro and specific scale, CI/CD integration helps with a host of things. It simplifies processes like maintenance, it helps with developer and customer satisfaction. There are also reductions in cost and time loss associated with CI/CD integration. In terms of how to utilize CI/CD, there are an increasing number of modern platforms built around CI/CD. This means taking advantage of the benefits of CI/CD is easier than ever.

So what is the role of CI/CD? Simplification. In a time where expectations seem impossible to meet, it’s important to make the path there as simple as possible. CI/CD won’t save unskilled and unorganized developers, it won’t make up for weak code. Instead it’s a tool that those looking to be as efficient and effective as possible can use. Any developer is going to need to do tests on their code, it’s an important process of development. The ability to do it automatically and seamlessly is then undeniably invaluable. CI/CD are important steps into the future, the question is who will take advantage.

Source: BitRise.io