Whether you are an enterprise or a startup, continuous integration (CI) can help you optimize your operation. Continuous integration is the concept of building and verifying code whenever there is a change.
Most companies today use some form of version control (If you’re not using version control, you should look that up first). In a CI environment, developers are encouraged to commit code as often as possible.
You can use a build system like Jenkins or CircleCI to implement a CI system. But CI is more of a practice than a specific tool. If you want to run continuous integration with bash scripts and cron jobs, you can do that too.
Here are some of the reasons to implement a CI system:
1. Fix Problems Faster
The CI system takes the submitted code, builds it on an independent machine and runs tests. This simple step can save you a lot of headaches.
If you are building the code on your developer’s machine, there’s always the possibility that it will not build in other computers. Environment variables or particular middleware version can be the culprit. A CI system safeguards you against such problems.
Changes get built and verified through the continuous integration system. Any code break is reported back to the responsible party. So it gets fixed instantly.
2. Automation Saves Time and Money
Are your developers building the release builds in your company? Take an estimate of the time your developers spend on building binaries for quality assurance (QA) or sending it to fellow developers. Then calculate the time they are spending each year.
You’ll see that the few minutes here and there can add up to a lot. Instead, use the CI system to automate the process. You’ll have more reliable builds while saving time and money.
When your on-boarding a new employee, if it takes a long time to explain the CI system, then you can assume there is a problem. A good CI system should make life easier for everyone. New employees should be able to understand what’s going on with the CI system intuitively.
3. Creates An Audit Trail
Even though version control has markers about your builds, it might be confusing and difficult to go through the history. After all, your version control has everything. And too much information can be as bad as too little information.
Your CI system will provide a way to keep track of the milestones. You can further improve your process through proactively designing your CI system to be audit-ready.
4. Increases Confidence in the Product
Continuous integration is not a magic bullet. It takes time to build a reliable and workable CI system. As mentioned before, CI is more of a practice than a particular tool.
Once you build the CI system, it will increase the confidence of the developers in the product itself. Developers like solving problems. But they need a system that supports them. With a CI system, you should never have to hear the dreaded words: “But it works on my machine”.
A good CI implementation should help you create harmony between different groups. And this harmony will be reflected in the quality of your product.
5. Prepares Your Organization for Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment
If you are dreaming of a seamless end-to-end pipeline for your company, where your developers can regularly create market-ready products (continuous delivery) or directly release the product (continuous deployment), you need CI as the first step.
It’s not possible to have a continuous delivery or deployment system without CI. You need to have a DevOps process that supports CI before you can take the next step to be a full CI/CD organization.
Conclusion
Continuous integration is not about clever tools. It’s about human beings. Maybe in the future, we will have AI-based developers, but as long as we have human beings working on applications, we need to design the CI system with human needs in mind.
Putting a particular tool will not get you CI-ready. You’ll need to prepare your organization and make it a regular practice. But with a successful CI system, you will reap the benefits discussed above.
If you have questions or looking for a Build/Release/DevOps Engineer, please contact me on LinkedIn.
Tags: Continuous Integration, DevOps, Software Development
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