When a company’s core business is delivering software, the tools it chooses to use are crucial to maintaining efficiency. Thus there is no reason to deliver CI/CD software in a model other than CI/CD.
After we deliver shiny new CI/CD software to our clients, the work is hardly done. The software ages and the technical debt runs up. According to Deloitte, the typical application comes with $3.61 worth of technical debt per line of code. That debt accounts for every fast-but-imperfect patch or app architecture that ages and also makes innovations hard to apply.
It also covers developers’ time to debug, hours of consulting and customer service people having to address client issues and the general cost of publishing the buggy software, all of which is brand destructive.
Technical debt in software production – a real problem
The lengths companies go to reduce technical debt shows just how seriously they take it. 52% of total bug removing time is spent on repairing architecturally complex defects, even though they account for only 8% of all defects.
Using software that is merely “working” is just not enough – it has to be updated and improved all the time to reduce the debt, which otherwise might blow up at some point. That applies not only to whatever product is being produced but also to the production software. Using outdated software limits a company’s potential. Aging solutions cannot support new programming languages or new technologies. That’s why patches and updates are necessary. In fact, CI/CD pipeline is the most effective way to maintain and develop software production software.
-> Want to learn more about CI/CD? Check out our other articles:
- Best CI/CD pipeline tools you should know
- CI/CD tools in DevOps – which should you choose?
- CI/CD process—how to handle it
- Business benefits of CI/CD
- How to set up and optimize a CI/CD pipeline
The Agile Approach
The agile approach allows a company to swiftly deal with bugs and glitches, both in the product and the production software. Combining swift feedback sessions with long-term work divided for short-term runs reduces business risk and allows teams to approach challenges more flexibly. From the client’s point of view, working with an agile company means having the ability to adjust and modify the product throughout the production cycle.
Our approach
To make the CI/CD of CI/CD possible, our DevOps team prepares a tailored solution with the CI/CD testing environment included. Leveraging DevOps methodology allows the company to build apps with scaling in mind, and thus also the ability to swiftly provide additional features.
For one of our clients we built a CI/CD system with open source components, making it transparent and easy to modify both by our experts and the client’s own IT team.
The solution was designed and built in parallel with consulting on business process redesign. It not only fulfilled its role but also was leveraged to implement innovations in the company.
Business impact
With the new CI/CD solution, companies can manage the risk hidden in technical debt. The main business benefits of CI/CD include:
- Quality delivered on time – the new solution reduced the testing time and improve the quality of the product delivered.
- Reduced business risk – Because the solution was tested and more bug-resistant, the company ultimately delivered higher quality software. Of course, higher quality business solutions also improve branding.
Companies can and do wait more than a year to include new functionalities just because they have to work through the old and unsolved bugs stacked in their backlog. From a business point of view, every new functionality is a customer-requested feature that needs to be applied as soon as possible. Now, will a company be competitive if it leaves customers waiting more than a year for something they want?
With the CI/CD approach to the CI/CD software, it was possible to reduce the amount of work required to deliver the product – the tool was fast and effective and able to support all the functionalities. With the reduced workload came greater business efficiency, as the solution remained effective and required little maintenance. And that, in a nutshell, is how to avoid technical debt while delivering cutting edge software.
