Making changes to software is a natural part of developing the desired user experience, but changes can’t be made effectively with continuous integration and continuous delivery. Whether those changes are occuring in the beginning stages of software development or within a testing scenario after the initial launch, you’ll likely come across the need for continuous integration and continuous delivery services at some point or another. Ecliptic Ideas boasts extensive experience in all areas of software development, including continuous integration and continuous delivery.
For those curious about what continuous integration and continuous delivery might mean for your applications, Ecliptic Ideas is here to help. Our solution-oriented approach guarantees that we’ll use your time wisely and always improve the user’s experience. If you’re looking to elevate your program or app’s user experience, Ecliptic Ideas is the top choice.
What is Continuous Integration?
While you might have heard of continuous integration throughout the software development cycle, it’s important to also understand its benefits. Continuation integration (CI) is the process of automating any integrations of code adjustments from numerous contributors on a single software project. As we know, it takes a village to develop fail-safe software. Continuous integration is a best practice as it allows developers to repeatedly combine code changes to a central location. Afterward, cases and tests can be built and run to assess the programming.
There are then many automated tools used to evaluate the code’s accuracy before full integration. There are many benefits of continuous integration, the primary advantage being that it allows tests to be run effectively to check automated code quality, syntax style, and much more.
What is Continuous Delivery?
After exploring the process of continuous integration as a means for organizing the many changes made in the software development process, it’s important to then understand the transition to continuous delivery. Continuous delivery is the capacity to receive changes of any type into production and therefore into the actual hands of those using the software. The delivery might include the addition of new features, bug fixes, product experiments, or configuration changes. Regardless of what has been adjusted, continuous delivery guarantees that these changes are made in a time-efficient and sustainable way for long-term growth and adaptation.
A developer can spend countless hours developing software and will still eventually need to make changes to improve its user experience. With continuous delivery, businesses can make these deployments quickly and predictably. Whether that entails a large-scale distribution system, an embedded system, a mobile app, or a complex production space, continuous delivery ensures the code is always in a deployable condition. By running programs through the continuous integration and continuous delivery process, many software developers can avoid the testing, code freezes, or hardening phases of development.
What is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment?
While continuous delivery and continuous deployment might seem like the same thing, there are in fact many differences that software developers need to know to properly understand CI/CD services. Since software development begins with human involvement, there will always be the chance for potential errors down the line. The potential for error is why there are so many quality-assurance steps taken by the engineering team to make any required changes.
Continuous delivery is the automation of those steps taken to make any required changes within software production. Continuous deployment instead zeroes in on the actual deployment of those changes, focusing on the product’s release and the strategy of getting there. Continuous delivery deals with the hands-on process of changes getting automated while deployment is simply how those changes are realized at the end of the day.
Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment Services
Ecliptic Ideas has extensive experience in understanding continuous delivery and continuous deployment, and that’s why our services are here to optimize your development experience. With full know-how of the entire CI/CD process, we can help your business set up a formal CI workflow with your program’s best interests in mind. We’ll evaluate your program to check for a formal workflow and perform accessibility checks to see if the program results in any Lighthouse score changes.
Benefits of CI/CD
The countless choices made by a business’ software engineers and developers creates an obstacle for navigating the modifications needed to support program changes and new features of the software. When considering how much time this might consume to make and understand these changes, it’s important to adopt a process that can save time and potential headaches. Continuous integration and continuous delivery guarantee that you can organize any testing needs, incremental deployments, and validation requirements to get any adjustments into production. Some of the most prominent benefits of adopting a CI/CD workflow include, but are not limited to:
- Fewer Risks: Identifying and repairing bugs in the later stages of software development isn’t only a pain to complete, it’s also time-consuming and expensive. Especially after production release, those bugs can thwart productivity dramatically. CI/CD pipelines allow you to test and deploy code frequently to allow testers the chance to catch these issues early on and mitigate them in real-time.
- Less Manual Effort: Many areas of software development are subject to human error, especially areas with any manual effort involved. A CI/CD pipeline ensures that tests can be automatically triggered to check the new code is compliant with existing features and that everything is operating as intended.
- Faster Delivery: It’s not uncommon for many businesses and organizations to release features frequently. While this task is far from simple, a streamlined CI/CD pipeline allows developers to implement multiple daily releases if they desire. This means that developers can build, test, and deploy these features automatically, saving tons of time and guaranteeing a faster delivery overall.
Contact Ecliptic Ideas Today to Elevate Your CI/CD Workflow Experience
Ecliptic Ideas seeks to simplify and elevate the way you approach software development. Offering a wide variety of services from API integration to ground-up software development, we only succeed when your business starts to see progress. Contact an Ecliptic Ideas team member today to learn how continuous integration and a continuous delivery pipeline can upgrade your software’s deployment chain.
