Problem Statement
A very large and distributed team was facing challenges in managing the codebase, testing, and deployment of the application. The team was looking for a complete CICD solution that can help them automate the build, test, and deployment process.
Solution Overview
Our devops consultants selected Jenkins for CICD Pipeline. Jenkins is an open-source Java-based CI/CD tool that is widely used for continuous integration and delivery. The team implemented the following steps to achieve continuous integration and delivery:
1. Source Code Management: Explained to entire team on various branching strategies.
2. Build Automation: Created build pipeline in Jenkins that automates the build process.
- Checkout: Checks out the code from the GitHub repository
- Build: The pipeline builds the code using Maven
- Unit Test: Runs unit tests on the code using JUnit
- Code Analysis: Performs code analysis using SonarQube
- Package: Packages the code into a WAR file
3. Deployment Automation: Devops members created a deployment pipeline in Jenkins that automates the deployment process.
- Deploy to Dev: Deploys the code to the development environment.
- Deploy to QA: Deploys the code to the QA environment.
- Deploy to Prod: Deploys the code to the production environment on QA approval and signoff.
Tech Stack Leveraged
The following technologies were leveraged to implement the solution:
- Jenkins: An open-source Java-based CI/CD tool.
- Git: A distributed version control system.
- GitHub: A web-based Git repository hosting service.
- Maven: A build automation tool used primarily for Java projects.
- JUnit: A unit testing framework for Java.
- SonarQube: An open-source platform for continuous code quality inspection.
Benefits Delivered
The team has achieved the following benefits by implementing the solution:
- Faster Time-to-Market: The team can now build, test, and deploy the application faster, resulting in a faster time-to-market.
- Improved Code Quality: The team can now perform code analysis using SonarQube, which helps them identify and fix code quality issues early in the development cycle.
- Reduced Manual Effort: The team has automated the build, test, and deployment process, reduced manual effort and minimized the risk of errors.
- Improved Collaboration: The team can now collaborate more effectively using Git and GitHub, which helps them manage the codebase more efficiently.
The team has also implemented the following best practices:
- Separation of Concerns: Separated the build and deployment pipelines to ensure that each pipeline has a single responsibility.
- Automated Testing: Automated the testing process to ensure that the code is tested thoroughly before it is deployed.
- Continuous Feedback: Implemented continuous feedback by using tools like SonarQube to provide feedback on the quality of the code.