6 CI/CD Best Practices to Get You Started in DevOps
CI/CD is a process to develop and deliver high-quality software frequently and predictably. CI is a key practice of software development. CD helps CI to develop, build, test, and shift to the left. Without proper implementation of CI/CD, DevOps cannot work well.
CI/CD Best Practices
CI/CD provides multiple benefits to the organizations. But to get the benefits, they need to implement it successfully. Here are six best practices of CI/CD:
1. Security-First Approach
In the modern world of breaches and vulnerabilities, security is the priority. In the CI/CD system, developers can access codebase and credentials to deploy in different environments. Often it is the main target of hackers. That is why organizations should take a ‘security-first approach’ to secure the whole process from the external environment.
2. Tracking and Version Control Tools
Tracking tools like Jira and Bugzilla can give visibility to the progress of the DevOps team. Another tool is Git, a version control tool that creates a ‘single source of truth.’ This tool helps DevOps teams to collaborate and track code changes.
3. Reduce Branching
By reducing Branching, developers can spend more time developing rather than wasting time on version control. To get the best result, members can merge with the main branch or check at least once a day. Thus developers can deal with smaller bits of integration than the massive integration pain.
4. Find What to Automate First
Automation is a must in the CI/CD process. But members need to decide which one they will automate first. As teams’ first target is frequent delivery, it is better to automate the tests first. It will also help to reduce the workload of the teams.
5. Frequent release
To ensure frequent release, teams need to test the software in a production-like environment. To get a better result, they can add a deployment stage. They can choose any of the three deployment processes: Canary deployment (release to a subset user), Blue-Green deployment (two identical production environments- live production and idle), and A/B testing (test features within the application).
6. On-demand Testing
Running tests in containers ensure quality. It adds agility to the CI/CD cycle. Instead of building a separate testing environment, teams can run tests against a container image. Thus members can quickly destroy the spin-up containers when not needed.
CI/CD’s main task is to automate the process of building, testing, and releasing software. Automation does the repeatable work and reduces the cycle. Developers can also focus on their core work. Thus businesses can stay ahead of their competitors.
