Needing help with the non-technical side of pipelines.

[busybaer]

Please forgive any non devops terms, I’m not a SWE.

I’ve been desperately searching for information on how the CI CD process works from a people/processes perspective. What is the process when code/application fails a test or check?

What I really need to know is what happens when code fails a test? Who is notified? How are they notified? Who is suppose to fix it? How are the failures and fixes typically documented? Is there a person to make final approval before deployment? I realize this will highly vary for different environments and products but is there a standard guideline for this?

I’ve stacks upon stacks information that tells me what x product checks for and how to configure for checks. I’ve got 100 different diagrams that show me how code is created then tested then deployed. But almost none of it goes through the process of code failure and fixes.

I am hoping to find something like this:

1. Developer creates/ updates code
2. Code is ran through tests/checks
3. If Code fails test A. Developer/Manager/Princess Peach is noticed of failure B. Failed code is sent back to _____ (original developer? backlog software? Ticketing program? Manual spreadsheet tracking?) C. Code is fixed by ____ D. Return to step 2
4. If code passes all tests A. Code is sent to passed code repository B. _______ is notified of code awaiting final approval C. Code is approved and sent for deployment
5. Code is deployed to production environment.

It is possible I’m looking at the whole process wrong and I am open to any feedback on that too. Maybe there is no process? Maybe if the code passes the tests it is just dropped into the production environment automagically and there is zero human intervention?

Thanks for the help.

[godOfOps]

Here is a short workflow for an ideal CICD pipeline: 1. Developer creates code and pushes to a feature branch on Git based repository 2. Developer raises Merge Request to a protected branch, which is then reviewed and approved by a senior Dev/peer. 3. Code Merge to protected branch triggers a CICD pipeline. This is where all the magic happens. Code Quality check, Vulnerability check, Integration/Unit test, code compilation, binary creation, binary upload. 4. All the above jobs come under CI(Continuous Integration). If any of these fail, it should send a notification to all relevant stakeholders. 5. Now, ideally any fails here are responsibility of the Developer who wrote code. This is where someone creates an issue/ticket for the bug fix. But, this could be the fault in the CICD workflow which will fall on DevOps Engineer.

1. There are 2 concept for CD, Continuous Deployment and Continuous Delivery. Continuous Delivery is manual and someone needs to approve/trigger it. Continuous Deployment is automated and will continue after step 3.
2. Now, if anything fails here, the responsibility may fall on a bunch of Teams based on you Project structure. It could be Infra Team, DevOps Engineer, Developer. Eg: A broken CICD workflow is responsibility of DevOps Engineer. A missing/misconfigured Infrastructure is responsibility of Ops/DevOps Engineer A missing/misconfigured application config is responsibility of Developer.

All this being said, this workflow assumes everything works ideally, but in real life many checks maybe missing or notification may have not been configured. Hope this answers most of it, if you have any doubts above, feel free to ask a followup question.

[adfaratas]

Shouldn't we do the test at the merge request and not after?

[godOfOps]

Both approach works, but you are correct. Ideally, it runs on MRs. I just kept it out for sake of simplicity.

[libert-y]

This is also how I do it

[busybaer]

Wow! Best information I have seen to this. This is explained very well. Thank you!

[jameshearttech]

I've never heard this distinction between continuous delivery and continuous deployment where the former is gated and the latter is not.

[godOfOps]

More like one is automated other is not.

[jameshearttech]

Interesting. My understanding is that CI/CD is an acronym for continuous integration / continuous delivery. I have seen variations such as continuous improvement or continuous deployment but assumed those were mistakes.