Continuous Integration (CI) is a foundational practice in modern software development. It plays a crucial role in agile workflows as it promotes collaboration, faster release updates, and keeps software aligned with business needs. It encourages developers to integrate code into a shared repository frequently.
CI pipeline steps like builds and tests automatically verify each commit. This way, developers can catch errors early, and improve code quality.
In this article, we’ll go through ten essential rules to maximize your CI pipeline’s efficiency and reliability. These rules will help you optimize build speed, improve testing accuracy, and boost overall development processes. You can apply these best practices to new or existing pipelines.
A reliable CI pipeline starts with a strong foundation: a version-controlled core repository. Version control (like Git) helps teams maintain a single source of truth, ensuring all code changes are traceable and easy to review. Version control enables smooth collaboration by allowing developers to work on branches, create pull requests, and conduct code reviews before merging changes.