Implementing Continuous Integration/Continuous Development (CI/CD) starts with stakeholders buying into a Continuous Improvement culture that focuses on agility. CI/CD inherently involves a commitment to developing or maturing your organization’s internal agile practice and adopting automation. Consequently, organizations experience faster, higher-quality throughput.

CI/CD is the backbone of DevOps and bridges the gap between development and operations. In short, CI/CD sets up fast feedback loops between development and operations.

What Are the Steps for Implementing CI/CD?

There are no directions or steps to implementing CI/CD. It’s a process and cultural shift rather than a skill set. Part of that cultural shift includes a fail-fast mindset, collaboration vs. individual contribution, and the ability to measure success.

CI/CD focuses on defined life cycles highlighting tools and automation. The basis of it rests in:

  • Writing the tests
  • Writing the code you just wrote the tests for
  • Testing the code
  • Integrating the code to the existing base
  • Releasing it
  • Automating wherever you can, especially concerning testing and releasing components.

CI/CD is a practice that focuses more on what people do than the tools they use. When projects in an organization start to scale, it’s easy for leadership to assume that teams are practicing CI/CD.

Having all the tools set up and running doesn’t necessarily mean that teams have adopted CI/CD. Teams should have the discipline to adopt and maintain a CI/CD culture. This culture requires a change in human behavior.

Conclusion

CI/CD may look easy, but it requires genuine commitment from every team member. This includes those engaged daily to those only benefiting from their delivery to be effective. If you would like an assessment of where your team is at with its CI/CD adoption, reach out to the team at Gibson Group!