DevOps: CI/CD in Agile Development Projects

Mateo Martínez — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 21:04:43 +0000

In agile software development projects, the quality of the outcome, the speed of product delivery, and fault tolerance are fundamental aspects of their success. In this context, DevOps (Development – Operations) has emerged as a comprehensive approach that seeks to improve collaboration between development and operations teams. Its main objective is to enable agile software deliveries without compromising the stability of the organization’s operations.

By implementing DevOps, the objective is to adhere to the principles established in the Agile Manifesto. Particularly, the principle that emphasizes early and continuous delivery of valuable software to satisfy the customer aligns perfectly with DevOps’ philosophy of offering changes quickly and reliably.

Within DevOps, an important term “pipelines” emerges and is defined as a series of automated steps that enable continuous software integration (CI) and continuous software delivery (CD). This ensures that code is incorporated, tested, and deployed seamlessly, making it easier for development teams to deliver agile and reliable changes.

DevOps is not just about adopting new technological tools and accelerating processes; it’s about a cultural shift that aims to promote communication and collaboration among teams. DevOps processes are not static but rather organic and evolutionary. Each development team has its own unique needs and challenges, so there is no one-size-fits-all magic recipe or approach.

Implementing DevOps in an organization will result in increased agility, resilience, and innovation capability.

Continuous Integration (CI)

This process has its origin in the agile methodology of Extreme Programming, which seeks to deliver high-quality software quickly and continuously. CI seeks to integrate the work of each of the developers constantly. Each integration must be supported by automated tests that detect errors and correct them as soon as possible.

The main goal of CI is to reduce the risk of errors and integration conflicts that hinder the progress of a project. One reason for adopting Continuous Integration (CI) is to avoid the dreaded “Big Bang Integration,” which is the practice of integrating large volumes of code from different developers or teams at the end of the development cycle, rather than integrating it continuously throughout the process.

Trunk Based Development (TBD) is a software development strategy that promotes continuous integration by reducing the complexity of merging changes and encouraging teams to integrate their work frequently into the main branch, so CI is closely related to TBD.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

When the code has passed through CI, all members of the development team will have the latest code changes available, which is very useful. But software development has to follow its lifecycle, and that’s precisely the help that this first variant of CD will give us, which is defined as a series of automated steps to ensure that the code is in a deployable state, meaning all its artifacts (.jar, .war, container image) ready for someone to decide and deploy them on a server.

Continuous Deployment (CD)

This second variant of CD complements the first one, with the major difference that in this case, not only are the artifacts made ready for someone to deploy them, but the deployment on the server is automatic.

To achieve this, it is essential to have the appropriate tools and infrastructure that allow changes to be made without affecting services in production, known as Zero-Downtime Deployment.

The idea behind Zero-Downtime Deployment is to ensure that end users can continue using the application without experiencing any downtime. This is achieved through the implementation of specific strategies and techniques that allow the deployment of new versions of the application. Among the most common strategies are:

– Blue-green deployment: Deploys two production environments, where one is active and the other is updated. Once the new version has been tested, traffic is redirected to the new environment.
– Canary deployment: Implements a new version initially for a small group of users or servers, allowing it to be tested before fully deploying it.
– Rolling deployment: Deploys new versions of the application in stages or sequentially in different parts of the infrastructure, keeping the application online throughout the process.

Going back to CI and CD, we have several tools on the market that can help us run pipelines in our projects: Jenkins, GitLab, Travis CI, CircleCI, Spinnaker, AWS CodeDeploy, and Azure DevOps, among others.

Particularly, “GitLab” is a tool for the company “Software Evolutivo” is one of the best not only for DevOps but also for managing and planning software projects. Surely, we will soon delve into this tool in another blog post that we will leave for you in the recommended readings.

How to design a CI/CD pipeline for a project?

– Identify the complete workflow and lifecycle of your project from zero to the moment it goes out to a production environment or whatever the target environment is.
– Determine the steps your pipeline should follow to automate the identified lifecycle.

At this point, you should have everything outlined on paper, let’s continue:

– Consider the state and technological characteristics of your project.
– Research the tools that will allow you to implement your pipeline (validate that the technological and economic resources required are within your reach).
– Define the tools to be used.

It’s time to develop, and for this, the following is suggested:

– Include one step at a time in your pipeline, test it, and validate that each step achieves its objective.
– Start by implementing CI from the simplest and most fundamental so that you can continue (compilation, tests).
– Continue with a CD of delivery. Achieving that your application generates and uploads its artifact to the repository you want will be a great milestone.
– When you have the artifact in the repository, you will need to find the appropriate way for your repository to connect to the server where you will deploy it.

And finally, always ask for feedback from your team with the objective of continuous improvement.

Challenges when implementing DevOps

– Overcoming resistance to change and fostering a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility.
– Achieving complete automation of development, testing, and deployment processes.
– Effectively communicating the benefits of DevOps and providing training and support for the transition.
– Integrating security and compliance practices without compromising delivery speed.
– Establishing a strategy for continuous monitoring and feedback to improve software performance and quality.
– Designing infrastructure and processes that can grow and adapt as projects and teams evolve.

In conclusion, DevOps and CI/CD are two closely related concepts based on the principles of collaboration, automation, and continuous delivery to drive excellence in software development and delivery in agile environments.

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