What is The Target of Your CI/CD Pipeline?

None, Dev, Test or Production?

My typical article ranges from 800 to 1500 words. Starting with this one, I am experimenting with a short series of about 400 words, each titled with a thought-provoking question.

“CI/CD” and “CI/CD Pipeline” are common terms we hear a software team nowadays. I just did a job search (on an Australian job site), there is even a “CI/CD Pipeline” criteria for a low-paid support analyst job.

https://www.seek.com.au/jobs?keywords=CI%2FCD&jobId=76400655&type=standard

We know the “I” in CI stands for “Integration”. The shorthand CD can refer to either Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment.

I have asked some colleagues this question, “What is the target of your CD pipeline? In other words, Deliver or Deploy to where?”

There are three typical answers:

1. No idea or Never Thought this way.
   They call the CI (or CD) server the “Build Server”. Some Developers triggered a run to get a build package (manually), that’s all.

2. Deliver to the “dev” environment
   (By the way, dev environment is like a Developer Playground)

3. Deliver to the “test” environment
   Ready for manual testers and business analysts to verify.
   This is better than №2, at least dare to show the build outside the developers. Typically, executing some unit and integration tests is included the build process.

My answer, according to my understanding of Agile and Scrum, is production.

Many readers might still disagree silently, after seeing the above quotes. Some might say, “there is no need to frequent deployment to production, or not practical for our app.”