Utilizing CI/CD

Career Paths

How to interpret this table?

You may choose this advanced topic if you like doing the things listed under “they usually do”, and you are fine with not doing the things listed under “they usually do not do”.

Alternatively, you may choose it if you are interested in applying for the listed job roles and want to practice work that is close to those roles.

Job title	They usually do	They usually do NOT do	Real-life examples
Software Engineer (automation-focused)	Automate build, test, and delivery steps; keep the pipeline green; use pipeline feedback to guide development	Rely on manual builds, bypass failing pipelines, or treat CI/CD as optional	Teams using GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
CI/CD Maintainer	Design and maintain pipelines, define quality gates, ensure reproducibility and traceability	Create opaque pipelines or hide failures	Project-level CI maintainers, platform teams

Affected SDLC Phases

If a team chooses this advanced topic, the implementation, testing, integration, and deployment phases are tightly coupled through automation. Every code change must pass through a CI/CD pipeline that provides fast, actionable feedback.

Affected Tasks

Features are defined

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

By the end of this task, your team has defined how features will be validated by the CI/CD pipeline.

Technical Details

For each feature, the team must state:
- Which pipeline stages validate it (build, test, analysis, deploy)
- What constitutes a pass or fail

The pipeline is part of the feature definition, not an afterthought.

Quality

High-quality work shows features that are testable and automatable from the start.

Features are sorted by priority

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Your team prioritizes features considering CI/CD impact.

Technical Details

Prioritization must consider:
- Pipeline execution time
- Test stability and flakiness risk
- Integration risk

Features that break the pipeline must be treated as high priority.

Quality

High-quality prioritization keeps the pipeline stable and fast.

Features' cost and price are estimated

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Your team estimates cost including CI/CD effort.

Technical Details

Estimates must include:
- Pipeline configuration effort
- Test automation effort
- Maintenance of CI/CD scripts

Quality

High-quality estimates reflect the real cost of automation.

System is working

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

By the end of this task, your team demonstrates a working CI/CD pipeline.

Technical Details

The demo must show:
- Automatic pipeline trigger on commit or merge request
- At least one automated build
- At least one automated test stage

Manual triggering is acceptable only for demonstration, not for normal operation.

Quality

High-quality demos show reliable, repeatable automation with clear feedback.

Bug fixing

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

During development, your team reports and fixes one issue detected by the CI/CD pipeline.

Technical Details

The bug report must include:
- Pipeline stage that failed
- Error output or logs
- The fix applied
- A successful pipeline run after the fix

Ignoring or bypassing pipeline failures is not acceptable.

Quality

High-quality bug fixing treats pipeline failures as first-class defects.

User documentation

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

User documentation does not include CI/CD details.

Technical Details

No additional requirements beyond standard task expectations.

Quality

High-quality submissions keep CI/CD concerns out of user-facing docs.

Developer documentation

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Developer documentation describes the CI/CD setup.

Technical Details

Documentation must describe:
- Pipeline stages
- Tools and runners used
- How to debug pipeline failures
- How changes are promoted through the pipeline

Quality

High-quality documentation makes CI/CD usage transparent and maintainable.