CI/CD Pipeline Design

What it is

CI/CD automates the steps between a code change and it being safely deployable — continuous integration (CI) builds and tests every change; continuous delivery/deployment (CD) automates getting a passing build into production.

Key points

• CI: every commit triggers an automated build and test run, catching integration problems immediately instead of at a later manual merge.
• Continuous delivery means every passing build is deployable (a human still triggers the release); continuous deployment goes further and ships automatically on every passing build.
• Pipeline stages typically run cheapest/fastest checks first (lint, unit tests) before slower ones (integration tests, security scans) — fail fast to save compute and developer wait time.
• A pipeline is only as trustworthy as its test suite — CI/CD automates running checks, it doesn't substitute for having good ones.