Continuous Integration, Delivery, & Deployment: What’s the Difference?

Continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment are three related, but distinct DevOps strategies. They work towards the same goal—making our software development and release faster and more accurate—but do so in different ways.

Continuous integration

Where developers integrate code changes into a shared repository multiple times a day. Each integration is then verified by an automated build and automated tests in order to test changes and ensure those changes work seamlessly with other changes. The main purpose of continuous integration is to catch issues as early as possible by testing your code frequently.

Continuous delivery

Continuous delivery is an extension of continuous integration that delivers your changes to users quickly and sustainably. It automates nearly the entire software release process by automatically preparing and tracking the release to production. The only manual part of continuous delivery is the step of approving and initiating a deploy to production. In other words, it involves humans deciding what to release to users and when.

Continuous deployment

Continuous deployment is also an extension, and it works similarly to continuous delivery. It does not, however, involve the manual approval process that continuous delivery does. Therefore, continuous deployment takes every change in the source code and releases that code to production as soon as possible.

Here at Beta Breakers Quality Assurance Labs, we are the premier choice for continuous integration test solutions. With our programming expertise, we can customize our automated solutions to your specific needs. Give us a call today at 415-878-2990 to learn more.