As the name suggests, a continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment (CI/CD) process involves continuous development/build, testing, and deployment of new code/software/program. Some businesses, including Meta and Netflix, employ CI/CD processes to accomplish at least ten releases or more weekly. Other firms find it difficult to maintain that pace as they succumb to the pitfall of prioritizing the wrong functions/operations. In this post, we’ll discuss when to prioritize security, testing and time of release of codes, as well as various DevOps tools that support these priorities.
How to prioritize security, testing, and time to release
Prior to structuring your CI/CD pipeline, you should prioritize/emphasize security, testing, and release time. This impacts the way that you approach each stage of your CI/CD pipeline. If security is a high priority, for example, you can add more restrictions to the software before it’s delivered/deployed.
In addition, include supplementary static analysis tests in the development process or utilize a third-party tool such as SonarQube. If testing is your top priority, consider including performance testing in your CI/CD pipeline. Before releasing an application, developers should understand how their modifications affect its performance in production.
For example, if your business lies within a highly regulated field with rigorous compliance rules, like healthcare or banking environments, security must be your priority. Because it’s more difficult to remedy problems later, you should test and evaluate changes more thoroughly before they’re deployed.
However, in less regulated businesses, such as mainstream media or social networking sites, time-to-release may take precedence over security because the risk is lower.
DevOps tools that support these priorities
Continuous integration (CI) tools are pieces of agile software/solutions that allow numerous developers to rapidly contribute and work in an integrated code base. Without CI tools, developer cooperation will be a time-consuming manual process for synchronizing code updates. these tools enable: source control version management, automated testing, build automation, and automated deployment. Some popular CI tools include: Bitbucket pipelines, Jenkins, AWS CodePipeline, and GitLab among others.
- Bitbucket pipelines: Bitbucket Pipelines is a CI/CD solution/tool that is built into Bitbucket Cloud. It enables you to develop, test, and even deploy your code automatically depending on a configuration (prioritization) command/file in your repository.
- Jenkins: Jenkins’ success stems from its adaptability and extensibility. It’s an open-source tool, meaning it can be tweaked and extended to meet the needs of any company. Jenkins can work with almost any technology/tool stack. It also includes a simple scripting language (Groovy) for automating activities and customizing the build process.
- GitLab: GitLab works in a way that allows DevOps teams to fulfill objectives while still maintaining the reliability of their product (software/program). The application offers cross-functional prioritizing via quad scheduling (collaboration amongst products, development, performance, and UX), allowing for the harmonization of various functions in a CI/CD pipeline process.
Use on-demand testing environments
Running software checks/tests within containers reduces the number of variables and variances between production and development environments. As a result, the CI/CD cycle becomes more efficient, and the testing process becomes more agile.
Container-based testing setups/environments can be quite beneficial to DevOps teams. That is, Rather than downloading the build from a CI system and installing it in an independent testing environment, software tests can be run directly across a standalone application context without interfering with other tests that are running. This method saves time and lowers the possibility of errors.
Final thoughts
Configuring a CI/CD process/system is more than just choosing the right tools. A proper approach is also required, and everything should operate in the order of priority, depending on the intent of the business. While it may take some effort, making sure all of these distinct functions are properly configured in terms of precedence, from the start can make things a lot simpler for you in the long run.
