CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery)
Definition
CI/CD is a set of practices that automate the building, testing, and deployment of software. Continuous Integration (CI) means developers frequently merge code changes to a shared repository, where automated builds and tests validate every change. Continuous Delivery (CD) extends CI by automatically preparing every validated change for release to production. Continuous Deployment goes further, automatically deploying every validated change to production without manual intervention.
Why It Matters
Without CI/CD, software releases are manual, infrequent, and risky. Developers accumulate weeks of changes before attempting to merge, creating integration conflicts. Testing is manual and incomplete. Deployments are weekend events staffed by nervous engineers.
With CI/CD, every code change is automatically built, tested (unit tests, integration tests, security scans, linting), and packaged for deployment. Releases happen daily or even multiple times per day. Each release is small, low-risk, and easily reversible.
For enterprises, CI/CD is the foundation of software delivery velocity. Organizations with mature CI/CD practices deploy 200x more frequently and recover from failures 24x faster than those without (DORA State of DevOps Report).
Pipeline Stages
- Source -- Code committed to version control triggers the pipeline
- Build -- Application compiled and containerized
- Test -- Automated unit, integration, and end-to-end tests
- Security Scan -- SAST, DAST, dependency vulnerability scanning
- Quality Gate -- Code coverage, linting, and complexity thresholds enforced
- Deploy -- Automated deployment to staging, then production with approval gates
- Monitor -- Post-deployment health checks and metric validation
How BAG Uses It
Our CI/CD pipeline runs on every commit: automated linting, testing, security scanning, and deployment with Velocity ticket integration (automatically closing tickets when code reaches production). We architect CI/CD pipelines for clients using GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins, always with security scanning and quality gates integrated from the start.