Modern software development practices demand streamlined and efficient workflow management for delivering high-quality software under tight deadlines. From ensuring consistency across codebases to maintaining team cohesion, project managers must handle numerous challenges.
Today, CI/CD and DevOps are top choices for managing software development pipelines. While these two are interrelated, they have their differences. In this blog, we will compare CI/CD vs DevOps to understand them and find their unique benefits and key differences.
A] What is CI/CD and Its Benefits?
CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) are a set of practices and tools within DevOps that make software development efficient. CI/CD aims to find and fix bugs early to deliver high-quality software as soon as possible.
Continuous integration refers to the practice of adding a bit of code to the shared project as soon as it is finished. Once the code is added, an automated system checks if it is error-free. This ensures that the new code doesn’t cause errors in the existing code. Once the code passes all the automated tests, it goes live immediately. This is called continuous deployment, and it helps to speed up the process and minimise bottlenecks.
Benefits of CI/CD
- Development, testing, and deployment are automated, making the web and mobile application development process faster.
- Code changes, updates, and bug fixes can be delivered in a fraction of the time.
- Early bug fixes save the organisation’s time, resources, and reputation.
- Automated code checks improve software quality.
- Sharing completed code to a shared repository enhances collaboration and team cohesion.
- Faster releases shorten the feedback loop, accelerating software improvements.
B] What is DevOps and Its Benefits?
Unlike CI/CD, which is a set of tools for automation, DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, ideas, practices, and tech. It combines development and operations to create a productive environment. It eliminates the traditional silo method for enhanced collaboration and a faster development cycle.
When development and operations work together in mobile or web application development, the software can evolve faster than traditional means. DevOps aims to integrate collaboration and automation into an organisation’s cultural fabric.
Benefits of DevOps
- By combining development and operations and automating them, organisations can adapt to changing markets faster.
- Rapid delivery increases the speed of updates, bug fixes, and releases of new features.
- Practices like CI/CD help to ensure the reliable delivery of software.
- Automation can help to scale your operations and manage complex infrastructure changes with ease.
- Integrating DevOps improves collaboration, ownership and accountability.
- Using automated compliance policies allows you to adopt a DevOps model without sacrificing security.
Also Read: DevOps vs. Agile
Need help choosing between CI/CD and DevOps?
C] Key Differences Between CI/CD and DevOps
1. Scope
CI/CD implements frequent updates to the shared codebase and the live software through collaboration, automated testing, and deployment. CI/CD methods and tools bypass the traditional integration processes, making integration simpler and cost-effective. The ultimate goal of automation is to create a software-defined lifecycle.
DevOps principles focus on combining software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) in a single team. The aim here is to shorten the development cycle and deliver high-quality software, updates and features in a fraction of the time. It encompasses communication practices, team alignment, infrastructure management, monitoring, and incident response.
2. Purpose
The purpose of CI/CD is to make the development cycle faster and more efficient, from coding to deployment. CI/CD is used to reduce manual labour, mundane tasks, and costly testing and integration. CI helps to integrate code frequently without breaking the existing code. Meanwhile, CD ensures the code changes and updates have a shorter time-to-market. Together, they enable automation for faster testing and deployment without compromising code quality.
The purpose of DevOps is to improve collaboration between development and operations teams. DevOps is implemented if managers want both teams to work together and share responsibilities equally. It breaks down communication and responsibility barriers for managing development and operational challenges more effectively. Finally, it aims to create and enforce a cultural shift in the organisation. You can hire DevOps consultancy services to help you with these processes.
3. Implementation
There are several ways to implement CI/CD solutions for businesses, depending on your needs. Tools and pipelines like Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI, and GitHub Actions are commonly used for implementing CI/CD. These tools create a continuous loop of code integration and delivery for faster builds. Developers also use version control systems to track the changes in code for reference.
DevOps involves implementing CI/CD, process changes, culture shifts, and collaboration models. This is a key difference between CI/CD and DevOps, and it is a much more complex process than it may initially appear to be. Its implementation involves a phased approach, where you need to assess current processes, define clear objectives and goals, and build cross-functional teams. Once these processes are established, you should implement monitoring and optimisation infrastructure for continuous growth.
4. Stages
The CI/CD pipeline consists of four distinct stages: source, build, test, and deploy. These stages occur in successive order. During the source stage, unit testing and code compilation actions are triggered by a change in the code. During the build stage, the code is compiled into a usable format. Next, the code is tested by an automated tool to ensure everything works as intended. Finally, if the code is working, it is deployed in a staging or production environment.
Pipeline in DevOps covers a large number of stages, which also includes CI/CD implementation. The stages include planning and collaboration. monitoring, incident management, feedback loops, continuous improvement, and continuous delivery in DevOps. The DevOps cycle is meant to continue for the software’s entire life cycle.
D] Conclusion
While CI/CD and DevOps may have some differences, they are implemented together to meet modern software development needs. Both have their distinct advantages; however, you cannot choose just one for your workflow. When you implement DevOps, you also implement CI/CD at the same time.
If you are looking for a software development company in India to help you create the best mobile and web software using CI/CD and DevOps methods, contact Siddhatech today. We are always here for you.