The mission to bring agility in the overall software development process, has set an easy path for continuous integration (CI) to evolve. The CI process emerged as a strategic contributor in delivering business value. CI addressed the most major of code Integration challenges, where the code developed by the individual programmers is tested thoroughly and brought under one roof that is free from all errors. This ability of the CI process had a huge impact on the overall software development process life cycle and evolved as an effective software practice that enables faster and bug-free delivery of the product.
Benefits of Continuous Integration
There are many benefits CI brings to the overall software development process and below we highlight for you the key areas.
1. Developers time is saved by not having to:
- Run builds every time QA requests for it
- Prepare release notes
- Run profiling individually
- Run extra checks to identify which commit caused the build to break, and can focus on that only
2. QA time is saved by not having to
- Request and wait for builds - latest stable one is already available / mailed to them whenever ready
- Run basic regression tests, because Unit and UI tests have already passed
- Spend time figuring out what changes are there in a build - release notes are readily available
- Request for previous builds for comparison testing, as they are available publicly to project members
3. Managers' time is saved by having
- The latest build status visible
- Automated reports regarding stability and quality of the product
- An easy way to pull out latest builds any time to share with stakeholders
4. Stake Holders' time is saved by not having to
- Investigate about project status - all ongoing progress is visible transparently on the CI dashboard
- Wait for latest builds - it is mailed directly to them with release notes
Additional Benefits of Continuous Integration
Apart from the benefits mentioned above, some of the additional benefits Continuous Integration process adds to the overall software development process are:
- Integration issues come to light as they get added in code, and are fixed immediately
- Build status is transparent, and promotes quality in coding and unit testing
- The latest stable build is always available, no waiting. Archived builds are also available
- Release Notes are readily available for each build, directly from commit messages
- Saves time and cost for the developer and QA hours
- Agile & Lean enabler - “fail fast”
- Enforce clear commit messages, as they’ll be used in the Release Notes
- Enforce coding standards through Static Code Analyzers, Unit Test Coverage reports, etc
- Mandatory quality assurance through automated Unit Tests and UI Tests
- Encourages small and frequent commits
- Encourages testing of small features frequently
Are you interested in having benefits of CI (transparency and efficiency)? V-Soft Consulting is a CI enthusiast and has the right mix of experience and the talent to create the mobile apps. If you would like to learn more about our abilities and offerings, you can learn more about our mobile app practice or set up a free consultation with one of our experts to discuss your needs today.
About the Author
Aswin Kumar is the Practice Head for Mobile Solutions at V-Soft Consulting. Aswin leads the design and development that collaborates with leading companies to build mobile capabilities for existing and newly innovative platforms. Aswin and his team understand the requirement for back-end integration of cloud or premise based systems with a mobile application that delivers industry leading results for the enterprise. Aswin also leads the emerging technology initiatives like AR, AI, and ML.
Connect with Aswin on LinkedIn here, email avarma@vsoftconsulting.com, or learn more about how mobile enablement done right can transform your company here.