Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery or Deployment: practices that automatically build, test, and release code changes.
Continuous integration means developers merge their code into a shared repository frequently, and each change triggers an automated build and test run. Problems are caught early, when they are small and easier to fix.
Continuous delivery extends this by keeping the code always ready to release, often with a manual approval step. Continuous deployment goes further and pushes every change that passes the tests straight to production. A typical pipeline might run unit tests, security scans, build a container image, deploy to a staging environment, and then promote to production. Tools for this include GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins. CI/CD is a core practice of DevOps and helps teams ship smaller, safer changes more often.
A release method that runs two identical production environments and switches traffic from the old one to the new one once it is ready.
DORA MetricsFour measures of software delivery performance: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and time to restore service.
DevOpsA culture and set of practices that unite software development and IT operations to deliver software faster and more reliably.
Feature FlagA switch in software that turns a feature on or off for some or all users without deploying new code.
GitA free, open-source distributed version control system that tracks changes to code and lets many developers collaborate safely.
Integration TestingTesting that checks whether different parts of a software system, such as services, databases, and APIs, work correctly together.
Quality AssuranceThe process of ensuring software meets requirements and quality standards through planning, testing, and continuous improvement.
Unit TestingTesting individual pieces of code, such as functions or classes, in isolation to confirm they behave as expected.
Version ControlA system that records changes to files over time so you can review history, collaborate, and restore earlier versions.
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