Continuous Integration Flow

Continuous Integration is essential in reaching high-paced, sustainable software development.
Some people think "We have CI" means "We use Jenkins". Well, that's a good start - but it's nowhere near enough. Here is a small infographics to illustrate what CI actually means:

Key activities in CI

Of course, if you start to do everything at once, you will get nowhere.

If you are just taking your first steps with CI, obviously you want to start at stage 1: Checking out the source code repository and producing a build.
Once you got that, you want to be able to put that build somewhere - preferrably, you start with putting it on the Acceptance Test Stage.
Next, you start firing test suites. A unit test suite should exist, others probably still need to be created.

Just work on those items which cause the most pain first and work from there.


Maybe the journey will take you to Continuous Delivery or even Continuous Deployment? Attempting to go there without a good CI is actually suicide.
So, get your CI straight first.