Explore benefits of continuous integration
Continuous integration (CI) provides many benefits to the development process, including:
- Improving code quality based on rapid feedback
- Triggering automated testing for every code change
- Reducing build times for quick feedback and early detection of problems (risk reduction)
- Better managing technical debt and conducting code analysis
- Reducing long, complex, and bug-inducing merges
- Increasing confidence in codebase health long before production deployment
Key Benefit: Rapid Feedback for Code Quality
Possibly the most essential benefit of continuous integration is rapid feedback to the developer.
If the developer commits something and breaks the code, they'll know that immediately from the build, unit tests, and other metrics.
Suppose successful integration is happening across the team.
In that case, the developer will also know if their code change breaks something that another team member did to a different part of the codebase.
This process removes long, complex, and drawn-out bug-inducing merges, allowing organizations to deliver swiftly.
Continuous integration also enables tracking metrics to assess code quality over time. For example, unit test passing rates, code that breaks frequently, code coverage trends, and code analysis.
It can provide information on what has been changed between builds for traceability benefits. Also, introduce evidence of what teams do to have a global view of build results.
For more information, you can see: What is Continuous Integration?
CI implementation challenges
- Have you tried to implement continuous integration in your organization?
- Were you successful?
- If you did successfully, what lessons did you learn?
- If you didn't get successful, what were the challenges?