Continuous Integration

The process of delivering software

The process of delivering software involves a series of complex, interdependent tasks. Software must first be written, of course, but that’s neither the first nor last step in a software delivery value stream. Depending on the development platform, those steps include build, testing, and deployment, among others. Testing is a significant step in itself. Several different types of testing are required throughout the delivery process. Software must then be packaged, deployed, and monitored.

Teams write enterprise software for developers. Large software projects are often developed by multiple teams, each with a focus on a subcomponent of a distributed system. The code produced by all these developers must be gathered together and integrated. We learned in the Git chapters that a good source control management system is an important component of that integration process, but it’s not the only one.