Business Benefits of CI/CD

Getting code out of the door with the risk of discovering showstoppers like critical bugs found late, infrequent releases, too much manual work, or late feedback has spawned a need for adopting Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment/Delivery (CI/CD) technologies. For any competent software house, CI/CD is evolving as the modus operandi for rapid software delivery.

The “automate everything” mindset is gaining momentum as the need to streamline sprawling delivery ecosystems amplifies. Leveraging the benefits of deployment at the push of a button has transformed the software distribution and delivery paradigm over the last few decades. CI/CD, in unison, automates the flow from design to deployment - offering you better integration, delivery, and accelerated value. 

All potential bugs can be discovered at the pre-deployment stage on automating the release pipeline. Teams and individuals can take control of the uncertainties when going into production with a pragmatic and visible CI/CD pipeline. You experience value and business flow by delivering products and solutions with all the features that meet quality and deployment specific needs. 

Owing to the rise of modern applications, cloud native architecture, and microservices, all you need to do now is commit code to ship a bug-free product. Implementing CI/CD in your product development setup ensures a shorter software development life cycle, continuous deployment, more frequent releases, and improved security. The CI/CD loop amplifies feedback and communication with minimal sign-offs, no manual authentications, more iteration, and thus more innovation. 

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the benefits of CI/CD in software development.

Superior Quality Code 

Developers release code into a shared repository in small batches, which enables them to conduct parallel testing. Rather than working in isolation, they share their builds with the entire team frequently. Teams collaborate to identify critical bugs, which ensures that bad code does not make it to production.Thus  CI/CD implementation drives business growth by providing high-quality releases that have fewer errors and bugs. 

Accelerated Release Cycles

With CI/CD, you can visualise the development cycle from commit to production, continuously merge code, and repair detected bugs. You can release software to production multiple times after thorough testing without compromising quality parameters. CI/CD always keeps the code in a release-ready state as changing code frequently is more of a routine now in modern software development. 

Loyal Customer Base

The on-demand delivery experience that customers insist on leaves little room for errors and bugs. Matching them with the best fulfillment is critical to capturing market share. Implementing CI/CD reduces both lead time and response time, which in turn minimizes release risk and maximizes developer time. A stable operating environment and faster resolution to production requirements enable you to cement customer loyalty and create great experiences.

Detection & Isolation

In CI/CD, you continuously integrate small batches of code instead of the entire application, which makes it easier for developers to spot anomalies and rectify them. Software testing is not an afterthought any longer with this approach. You can limit potential breakdowns and other critical issues by isolating bugs and vulnerabilities before they damage the entire application. As far as benefits go, this aspect of CI/CD is a huge boone to organizations.

Easy Maintenance & Updates

Downtime often results in irreparable damage to customer trust and the company’s reputation. Catching bugs in the early stages of deployment helps you fix the bugs promptly without any delay in shipping the build. While testing takes place in the background, developers can save a lot of time, which enhances productivity. 

Cost Deduction

As per one of the recent Forbes Insights surveys, “Three out of four executives agree that the amount of time, money, and resources spent on ongoing maintenance and management—versus new project development or new initiatives—is affecting the overall competitiveness of their organization.”

Delivering high quality tailor-made solutions to address business-specific challenges requires a way to meet the rapid time constraints imposed by rivals. Embracing CI/CD is the perfect fix to shorten the time to finish a project and market new features. The shorter the development cycle, the higher the chances are to meet ambitious time-to-market goals.  

Improved Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR)

With small code changes and quick fault isolations, adopting CI/CD plays a crucial role in reducing the MTTR, thus keeping deployment failures to a bare minimum and recovering quickly from failures is a critical business risk assurance for those embarking on the CI/CD journey.

Conclusion

CI/CD will ultimately become imperative for your business - the benefits are simply too many. Migrating from the legacy software release cycles to CI/CD won’t just accelerate the time-to-market, but also result in a productive and satisfied development team.

As you journey through CI/CD, you’re bound to run into some challenges. Luckily, we have a piece for that! Read up on CI/CD challenges - and how to avoid them, plus benefits for continuous integration specifically.