The topic of Continuous Integration has gained a lot of ground in the past few years in the Software Development world – several high quality tools have emerged . Some companies have adopted it as integral part of SDLC methodology. Some I think are still trying to understand it , however a lot have not yet just made it their daily practice due to either lack of tools within the company or lack of a process. I have worked in this industry for more than 20 years and there are several reasons why I think CI adds immense value to software development process to make it efficient and productive. After going through many sucessful and some unsuccessful projects , here is how I conclude CI brings in value:
1 ) Bugs are detected on a daily / regular basis and remedied right away by integrating code checked in by different developers into Source Control . Continuous Integration works by kicking off a build process on your build server based on check-ins made by the team . CI tools give you the option to build as a check-in is made or at a certain frequency or at a certain time etc. So you get to control how you go about it. If a Build is required to be done as a check-in is done by a developer , right away bugs / integration problems get detected – they are remedied as you go along daily, reducing many integration hassles and mitigating risks earlier.
2) In medium to large scale projects there are different groups , stake holders . DBAs who work in conjunction with Application Developers sometimes want to look at GUI or application in action to see what type of data was entered that caused a SQL / Stored Procedure to fail. Although DBAs don’t necessarily need to look at application running in Dev Integration server to detect data related problems , however it gives them a great way to Visualize what an application developer has to say about why a SQL exception may have occured. It expedites problem detection by running the application as well as other runtime SQL method call capture tools like SQL Profiler concurrently.
3) A little while ago I wrote a blog about how the gap between UX Designers and Developers can be bridged by following certain practices with the development cycle. Continuous Integration can play a key role in shortening the gap : UX Designers often or almost always need to see the final integrated UI after the UI developers take UX designer’s Mocks / CSS / Javascript and integtrate their code with it. If you have a CI in place the UX designer can just go to the dev server and look at the latest dev build helping him see how the final UI looks without having to sit next to the developer. Obvious as it is , this will aid in UI layout related debugging and early detection of any cosmetic problems as well as work flow related issues.
4) Progress Track and Control are an integral part of Project Management and SDLC. PMs , BAs and Management stake holders need to be kept in the loop as regularly as possible for better Control management of any software project. A great way to measure development progress by non technical groups is to look at the actual application taking shape on the Dev Build server. Needless to say how this will help very early in the Iteration of a project. Any problems , risks or change requirements can be made early on saving time and money which are the two crucial cornerstones for a Project’s success.
5) In this age of globalization and distributed enterprise , CI can play a crucial role in bringing different groups together . Developers could be in India , UX team could be in US and other stake holders could be anywhere. If dev build servers can be accessed via the company Intranet or VPN from anywhere then the communication and collaboration gap is not widened by geographical distances and Project can be delivered on time even with a distributed arrangement like this. Here is a diagram that visually conveys the idea….
The reasons above qualify enough for every organization to adopt and invest in CI – especially for medium to large projects . There are several tools available – form Open Source to Proprietory . Cruise Control is a well know open source tool as welll as TFS by Microsoft which ia an end-to-end SDLC tool. These are just examples. Web is full of articles, blogs and tools that you can use for CI. If you have not taken the time to integrate it into your team’s dev process , wait no more it’s worth your while and money.
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