Why do you need to automate your development?

Using Automation to Streamline Integration and Release Process’ is a look at Tomorrow

Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment. These are a part of the Agile methodology and are helping developers to deliver constant bug fixes, features and improvements. Using automation as a part of the development process allows development and operations teams to operate more cohesively. Let’s take a look at each of these variations and what you will need to accomplish them. This article will also cover some reasons why you are going to want to have a look at CI/CD for your development needs.

Continuous Integration (CI)

This development process method requires that you write automated tests. Writing automated tests for all of your features, bug fixes and improvements allows you to mitigate the issues that come with trying to continually update code on multiple branches of the product without them conflicting due to context switches. Automated testing also means that fewer bugs make it through to production. This lets you can solve integration issues early and easily. 

Continuous Delivery (CD)

This method requires a strong base of CI. The automated testing has to encompass enough of your code that you can run an automated deployment. You will have to get used to using feature flags. These keep features that aren’t complete from affecting your customers in production. One of the benefits of this method is that it makes deployment much easier. No more frantic days spent by the whole team preparing for releases, once you choose to deploy, it is done automatically. This allows you to release more often, which translates into improving more often. Customers like to see that your product is improving regularly.

Continuous Deployment (CD…Again)

You will need excellent testing again to utilize the other CD, Continuous Deployment. This style of automation-assisted development automates the changes from the repository to production. You can see why testing is crucial for this. Again, feature flags are necessary and you will need fast documentation to keep up. You will, however, be able to develop much faster. The deployment pipelines fire for every change that is made. This allows your customers to see a constant stream of improvement, adding value to your product.

Automating Development into Tomorrow

Incorporating automated development practices is another step into the horizon for developers. The ability to improve the product at will offers unbridled flexibility and value to your customers and allows you to respond to their feedback more quickly. The ability to respond to feedback directly from your marketplace so quickly gives you and your product the edge you both need to keep up.