Glossary · Programming

CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Delivery)

CI/CD is the practice of automatically building and testing every code change (CI) and automatically releasing it to environments or production (CD).

Updated October 6, 2026

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (or Deployment). CI merges developers' changes frequently and runs an automated build and tests on each one. CD extends this by automatically preparing, and often deploying, every passing change to staging or production.

Why it matters

Automated pipelines catch breakage within minutes, not days, and make releases routine rather than risky events. Small, frequent deployments are easier to debug and roll back. The risk is that a fast pipeline can also ship a bad change quickly, so monitoring after each deploy matters.

Example

A pipeline defined in YAML:

on: [push]
jobs:
  test:
    steps:
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test
  deploy:
    needs: test
    steps:
      - run: ./deploy.sh

Every push runs the tests; only if they pass does the deploy job run.

Common mistakes

  • Skipping or ignoring failing tests to get a release out.
  • Having no health check or rollback plan after an automated deploy.
  • Storing secrets in the pipeline file instead of the platform's secret store.

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