Pros and Cons of CI-CD Pipelines

CI-CD pipeline

What is Continuous Integration?

Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are the latest and one of the most used trends in software development. CI is when developers continuously and frequently integrate code in a shared repository or main branch multiple times in a day. But the changes that are made goes through several automated tests to rectify problems and get checks done.

What is Continuous Delivery?

Continuous delivery/ Deployment is an extension of CI. In CD, the developers and other team members ensure that every change that takes place is releasable in the system. CD pushes the build further to delivery environments. CD, like CI has quantifiable risks. Pipelines are deployable unit paths once CI and CD are in place.

Pros of CI/CD

· Smaller codes are simple and have less unintended consequences.

· Mean time to resolution (MTTR) is faster and shorter.

· Fault isolation is smaller and faster.

· Improved test reliability due to smaller and specific changes.

· Increased release rates help detect and repair failures faster.

· Number of non-critical defects in your backlog can the reduced by incorporating CI/CD

· CI/CD help in getting customer and employee feedback.

· Automation in CI/CD reduces the number of errors that can occur in the multiple steps if CI/CD pipeline.

Cons of CI/CD

· The businesses have to be alert and iterative enough. Avoid wrong automation process done first and be extra cautious in picking the right order of process.

· The code base has to be ready and be immediately put to production once the current result is successful. This immediacy can lead to cause panic in businesses.

· The teams may make a dashboard that not every member know beforehand. This results in falling a prey to logical fallacy.

· As CI and CD are coordinated, they have to be implemented in sync with each other. A lot of attention and detailing with respect to human factor is required to get them going.