What Is CI/CD?

Continuous integration and continuous delivery or deployment (CI/CD) is a principle of DevOps software development methodology. These guidelines help organize a software development project's workflow and manage deliverables throughout initial development and all subsequent updates to the code. The goal of CI/CD and DevOps is to help teams deliver higher code quality in shorter amounts of time.

In the following article, you'll learn more about the CI/CD pipeline, which careers can benefit from mastering it, and how you can implement it in your own software development practice.

Read more: What is DevOps?

What is CI/CD?

CI/CD is the short-hand, standard way to refer to continuous integration and continuous deployment or delivery. Each of these phrases breaks down individually into a set of processes that help a DevOps team automate the testing, delivery, and deployment of software updates and code. 

• Continuous integration (CI): Continuous integration uses version control to allow multiple developers to work on code simultaneously. Small sections of code are copied to allow developers to manipulate and continuously test them in an isolated setting before merging completed updates back into the source code repository. CI encourages team members to submit incremental code updates.

• Continuous delivery or deployment (CD): Continuous delivery refers to the next phase of the software development life cycle, wherein validated code is deployed to a production environment. The main difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment lies in automation. Continuous delivery relies more heavily on human intervention, while continuous deployment focuses on a more advanced level of automation, especially automated testing.

Read more: What is GitHub and Why Should You Use It?

Principles of CI/CD

Certain hallmarks of CI/CD are common across all projects using these frameworks, including using a single central code. In one central location, often called the repository, you can find all the source code, libraries, files, and other tools needed to create or manage new code. 

Additional CI/CD principles include the following:

• Integration of new code in small chunks: A small piece of code is easier to troubleshoot and roll back if anything goes awry. 

• Automated builds and testing: Testing is integral to CI/CD to ensure everything works as expected. Automation speeds up and simplifies iterating processes by removing time-intensive and tedious work from DevOps team members. 

• Short, repeated iterations: It is vital to deliver small amounts of code and create a timely workflow. To achieve that, you will need to repeat iterations frequently. 

• Low-risk and predictable deployments: Frequent and predictable deployments help build confidence in the DevOps team, increasing software quality by limiting potential problems. 

Read more: 11 DevOps Tools for 2024

CI/CD pipeline

The CI/CD pipeline is a way of structuring the workflow in CI/CD projects. This approach involves several stages in each iteration, including the source, build, test, and deployment stages. 

In the source stage, a change to the main repository signals that code is entering the CI/CD pipeline. User requests or regularly scheduled maintenance can also trigger the pipeline to start. 

The build stage refers to when developers create and compile the code. It also includes archiving code into an artifact repository, an essential element that allows you to return to previous builds if your current one experiences a problem. 

The next stage, continuous testing, is automated in continuous integration workflows. This stage helps avoid easily preventable errors and spots for bugs early in the process. You might perform integration tests, unit tests, and regression tests in this stage. 

Finally, the code is ready to leave the development environments and prepare for the deployment stage. It will undergo testing and staging before moving on to a production environment.

Keep in mind that software development life cycles are iterative, and steps may be repeated as many times as necessary before moving code to production to ensure quality.

Who uses CI/CD?

CI/CD is critical for DevOps teams. Depending on the size of your team, you may have more individuals performing multiple roles at once or professionals specializing in specific roles of DevOps. A few job titles in DevOps include: 

• DevOps engineer

• Build engineer

• Site reliability engineer

• Release manager

• Product manager

• Data analyst

Read more: DevOps Job Description: Who Is On a DevOps Team?

Benefits of CI/CD

Continuous integration and continuous delivery add value to software development teams, including: 

• Fewer errors in code: By testing each update individually, development teams can spot problems faster and spend less time debugging. 

• End product designed with the user in mind: Each iteration allows you to gather feedback from the end user and client, enabling you to develop your project with their needs in mind. 

• More productive development team: Encouraging automation allows your team to spend more time building new code and less on testing, building, and deployment. 

• Shorter time to market: When your developers are more productive and spend more time building new code, you’ll be able to get your product to market faster and for less money. 

• Implementation of automation tools: Automating time-consuming elements of the deployment process helps development and operations teams enable rapid deployment to meet business requirements and ensure satisfied customers. Automation can also reduce the number of human errors.

Careers that require knowledge of CI/CD

To gain experience with CI/CD, here are a few roles to consider:

DevOps engineer

Average salary: $141,000  [1]

Job outlook (projected growth from 2023 to 2033): 17 percent [2]

Education requirements: According to Zippia, 75 percent of DevOps engineers hold a bachelor’s degree, 20 percent hold a master’s degree, 2 percent hold an associate degree, and 3 percent have a diploma or other degree, typically in computer science, electrical engineering, or computer engineering [3]

DevOps engineers work on a team that combines traditional departments of developers and operations into one central team. In this role, you will work with other professionals to manage code deployment, including building infrastructure to support code in various environments, testing for errors, and troubleshooting problems.

Software engineer

Average salary: $161,000 [4]

Job outlook (projected growth from 2023 to 2033): 17 percent [2]

Education requirements: Seventy-three percent of software engineers have a bachelor's degree, 20 percent have a master's, and four percent have an associate degree, commonly in computer science, electrical engineering, or computer engineering [5].

A software engineer creates and builds computer software with other professionals. In this role, you may be responsible for directly developing new products, processing data, debugging programs and looking for errors, working with databases, working to provide data security, and more.

Entry-level software developer

Average salary: $132,000 [6]

Job outlook (projected growth from 2023 to 2033): 17 percent [2]

Education requirements: Seventy-two percent of software developers have a bachelor’s degree, 20 percent have a master's, and five percent have an associate degree, typically in computer science, computer engineering, or electrical engineering [7].

A software developer creates, tests, and maintains software applications. In this role, you may be responsible for directly coding new programs, working with designers and other project stakeholders, looking for bugs, and correcting errors in code, among other tasks.

Read more: How to Become a Software Developer (With or Without a Degree)

Sharpen your DevOps skills on Coursera

Starting your DevOps career? Take the next step and earn credentials for your resume with the IBM DevOps and Software Engineering Professional Certificate on Coursera. This beginner-level, 14-course series is designed to help you learn skills in CI/CD, DevOps, Cloud Computing, Agile, Scrum, automated testing, version control systems, and more. 

If you're a software engineer or developer interested in transitioning into a leadership role, you might consider enrolling in IBM's intermediate-level Applied DevOps Software Engineering Professional Certificate program. You'll learn to develop and execute tests using TDD methods, gain technical experience developing RESTful Python microservices, and more.