Quality at speed in high-performance IT delivery with CI/CD
BLOG
QUALITY ENGINEERING & TESTING

Quality at speed in high-performance IT delivery with CI/CD

In this blogpost, Rik Marselis from SogetiLabs highlights a key enabler for DevOps – continuous integration and continuous delivery, and its impact on delivering quality at speed. So how easy is it to get started?

The book “Quality for DevOps teams” and the renewed TMAP body of knowledge support all people involved in IT delivery, to deliver business value using IT systems that are at the right quality level.

In this blogpost, you will learn about a key enabler for DevOps, which is a continuous integration and continuous delivery. The totality of this topic is way too extensive for one blog, therefore let’s have a look at the setup of a CI/CD pipeline.

The CI/CD pipeline supports one of the letters in the CALMS DevOps framework; the A of automation. The pipeline bridges the gap between development and operations by automating the building, packaging, testing, provisioning of infrastructure and deployment of applications in the integration process and delivery process.

High-performance IT delivery teams deliver value in a rapid pace. To experience the benefits as soon as possible the IT system has to be brought to ‘production’ as fast as possible without doing any concession to the quality.

The CI/CD pipeline in itself doesn’t increase the quality of the system, but it automates the execution and evaluation of development and operations activities including the tests and thus quickly supplies information about the quality. Automating these repeating, time-consuming steps is essential to maintain quality at speed.

 

 

The figure above shows our stylistic representation of a CI/CD pipeline which consists of the CI part (the build pipeline that represents the team scope) and the CD part (the release pipeline that represents the business scope). In every stage of the CI/CD pipeline, continuous monitoring and feedback from the monitoring are integrated. Any problem encountered in one of the stages will be – automatically – reported and the CI/CD workflow will be stopped. DevOps teams have the practice to always have a successful CI/CD pipeline so the DevOps team members will solve the problem and the process then reiterates.

The setup of a complete CI/CD pipeline requires a certain level of maturity of the IT organization. But start as soon as possible: even a subset of the complete pipeline already brings the advantage to deliver improved quality and stability to the IT system.

Want to learn more? Have a look at the “Quality for DevOps teams” book, of which I am a proud co-author, and do not hesitate to reach out to me to discuss further.

CONTACT
  • Rik Marselis
    Rik Marselis
    Quality and Testing Consultant | Netherlands
    +31 886 606 600
Continous Testing Report 2020
TECHFLIX Webinar Series