What is CI/CD Development?

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) is a software development method that uses automation processes to increase the frequency of customer application delivery. It comprises continuous integration, delivery, and deployment, and helps developers and operations teams overcome integration challenges when implementing new code with little or human intervention.

The CI/CD method involves automated processes and monitoring throughout the app lifecycle. This method includes integration, testing, delivery, and deployment, commonly called a “Continuous Integration/Continuous Development and Deployment Pipeline.” 

Students looking to pursue a career in software development with a degree and certifications from CIAT.edu are recommended to research additional materials around CI/CD. Many prospective employers that adopted DevOps as part of the application transformation will also leverage CI/CD models.

How Does CI/CD Relate to DevOps?

DevSecOps is a security-independent framework for every phase of development lifecycles. It focuses on integrating security into DevOps workflow and is used by successful organizations. By applying security throughout the development lifecycle, organizations may experience fewer outages, data breaches, and system unavailability.

Continuous Integration (CI)

Continuous Integration (CI) is based on processes, mechanics, and automation. Developers commit the code to external code repositories as a practice of Continuous Integration process. Most teams usually commit code at least once per week, in accordance with the organization’s software development process, as part of their software delivery process.

Software development teams will create code updates for shorter commit periods, reducing the chance of multiple developers editing the same code or merging their code during a commit.

Slight code differences are easier to identify and have fewer defects and more quality issues over extended periods during the development of the release process. 

Many of these smaller commits fall into the DevOps sprint development cycle for incremental code changes, automation deployment cycles, and reporting into the version control repository. Automation is essential to support production-integrated testing before the code moves to production deployment.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

Protecting and developing application source codes are critical for organizations focused on DevOps metrics, rapid new microservices deployments, and faster times-to-market. Over 30 million developers worldwide leverage GitHub and GitLab to help meet their application transformation deadlines and requirements.

Continuous Delivery (CD) uses automated builds and testing in a repository, including GitHub, for continuous production environments. GitHub is a “repository” for source code. Millions of developers use this worldwide to promote open-source libraries. A source code creator will publish their work on GitHub for others to access.

The Continuous Delivery phase involves Test and Release Automation for each stage, from coding and merging to production. GitLab offers several security automation tools, including SAST, DAST, and Container Scanning, to help ensure secure applications and compliance with licensing requirements.

Operation teams can quickly deploy the app into production after completing code reviews, security testing, and validating the automation process. This workflow is at the core of Continuous Deployment (C/D) pipelines.

Continuous Deployment

Mature Continuous Deployment (C/D) pipelines involve both CI and CD. C/D automates the release of production-ready builds to a codebase. Apps become automatically released into production through continuous deployment. The absence of a manual gate in pipeline stages before production makes highly designed test automation crucial. With continuous delivery, developers can deploy apps to a cloud environment, including the consolidated artifact repository, within minutes if they pass automated tests.

Continuous Delivery vs. Continuous Deployment

Differences in software delivery and continuous development come down to the degree of automated software development involved. 

In continuous deployment, the code moves to production environments to further test and quality assurance, and engineering teams must take part in entering production after a successful test process. Ongoing automation extends to continuously deployed systems to help reduce deployment risk. 

Once the software passes testing, the production process occurs instantly, requiring no human approval. The less human interaction, the less chance of misconfiguration resulting in security breaches and data loss.

Continuous Testing and Security Automation

The automated process supporting the software development lifecycle for application development comprises the bulk of an organization’s code management and quality code strategy.

Testing frameworks help developers define software development. They use functional tests developed in each sprint to analyze all software components. Regression testing identifies when code changes fail. It is recommended that developers use regression testing on the remote system.

How Does Shift-Left Apply to CI/CD?

The concept of “shift-left” applies the ideal of testing security during each CI/CI and C/D process. As teams develop a minor code, specific integration tests and validation occur as this snippet moves to the next stage in the CI/CD model.

Shift-left application security involves security at the earliest stage of the software development lifecycle and makes all the development operations (DevOps) teams aware of their responsibilities.

With Continuous Innovation (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD), there needs to be more work cycles for QA teams to identify a problem and send it to developers for remediation. Testing apps after completion is no longer necessary if organizations successfully migrate to shift-left. 

Knowledge for Today and in the Future

Rapid deployment of applications to support organization digital transformation strategies needed a fresh approach to reducing the time, complexity, and cost of code development. 

CI/CD with C/D provides the framework for continuous improvement to the organization’s applications while delivering changes to the code with minimal impact on production systems. Previously, any adds, moves, or changes to the source code became costly and complex. Under CI/CD, organizations can change the code to meet customer requirements more frequently and with less risk.

Students investing in learning more about CI/CD will gain incredible knowledge for the career ahead in software development.