CI/CD at a High Level

A clean, technical isometric flowchart diagram of a high-level CI/CD pipeline flow progressing from Code to Build to Test to Deploy.

Fig 1: High-Level CI/CD Pipeline Flow

The pipeline idea

One of the central concepts in DevOps is the pipeline.

A pipeline is a sequence of repeatable steps that move software from source code toward deployment.

The most common umbrella term is CI/CD.

CI/CD stands for:

Continuous Integration
Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment

Continuous Integration (CI)

Continuous Integration means changes are integrated into shared source control regularly, and automated checks help verify that the project still works.

Typical CI steps might include:

install dependencies
run linting
run tests
build the app
verify configuration
package artifacts

For a Node app, that might look like:

npm ci
npm test
npm run build

if those scripts exist in the project.

Why CI matters

CI reduces the risk of teams drifting apart in hidden ways.

Instead of waiting until the end of a week or sprint to discover that multiple changes conflict or break the app, CI creates earlier feedback.

That means problems get caught:

sooner
more cheaply
with less confusion

The Hidden Cost of Delay

Finding a bug five minutes after you wrote the code is a minor annoyance. Finding a bug three weeks later during a massive integration push is an expensive nightmare.

Continuous Delivery / Continuous Deployment

After CI verifies the build, CD handles moving the application toward a running environment.

That might include:

building a deployable package
creating a container image
pushing that image to a registry
deploying to a host or platform
restarting services with the new version

Delivery vs. Deployment

The difference between delivery and deployment usually comes down to whether the final production release is still a manual approval step (Delivery) or fully automatic (Deployment).

For this course, the important part is the concept: software moves through a repeatable release pipeline rather than a pile of improvised manual steps.

Extra Bits & Bytes

Martin Fowler: Continuous Integration

⏭ Memory Leaks

We’ve seen what a pipeline looks like. But why is it so much better than just remembering how to deploy an app? Let’s talk about the fragility of human memory in operations.