An Introduction to CI/CD Best Practices

Introduction

Continuous integration, delivery, and deployment, known collectively as CI/CD, is an integral part of modern development intended to reduce errors during integration and deployment while increasing project velocity. CI/CD is a philosophy and set of practices often augmented by robust tooling that emphasize automated testing at each stage of the software pipeline. By incorporating these ideas into your practice, you can reduce the time required to integrate changes for a release and thoroughly test each change before moving it into production.

CI/CD has many potential benefits, but successful implementation often requires a good deal of consideration. Deciding exactly how to use the tools and what changes you might need in your processes can be challenging without extensive trial and error. However, while all implementations will be different, adhering to best practices can help you avoid common problems and improve faster.

In this guide, we’ll introduce some basic guidance on how to implement and maintain a CI/CD system to best serve your organization’s needs. We’ll cover a number of practices that will help you improve the effectiveness of your CI/CD service. Feel free to read through as written or skip ahead to areas that interest you.