The correct order of activities in the Continuous Integration aspect is: Develop, Build, Test end-to-end, Stage. Continuous Integration (CI) is an aspect of the Continuous Delivery Pipeline that automates the development, testing, integration, and validation of new functionality in preparation for deployment and release. CI is the second aspect in the four-part Continuous Delivery Pipeline of Continuous Exploration (CE), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), and Release on Demand. CI consists of four activities, as shown in Figure 1:
Develop – This activity involves implementing stories by refining features from the ART Backlog, coding, testing, and committing the work product into the source control system. Testing in this activity tends to focus on unit and story-level testing and often requires test doubles to replicate other components or subsystems that are not readily available or easily tested.
Build – This activity involves creating deployable binaries and merging development branches into the trunk. Building in this activity includes compiling, linking, packaging, and verifying the code and components. Building also involves applying code quality and security checks, such as static code analysis, code coverage, and code review.
Test end-to-end – This activity involves validating the solution end-to-end, including the functional and nonfunctional aspects, such as performance, usability, reliability, and security. Testing in this activity requires integrating the code and components with other subsystems and services, and using test environments that resemble the production environment as much as possible. Testing also involves applying automated testing tools and frameworks, such as regression testing, integration testing, system testing, and acceptance testing.
Stage – This activity involves hosting and validating solutions in a staging environment before production. Staging in this activity includes deploying the solution to a pre-production environment that mimics the production environment in terms of hardware, software, configuration, and data. Staging also involves applying final checks and verifications, such as smoke testing, exploratory testing, and user acceptance testing910
1: https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/understanding-the-fundamentals-of-value-stream-mapping/ 2: https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/value-stream-mapping/adapting-value-stream-mapping-for-office-and-service-environments/what-is-the-c-a-percentage-complete-accurate-metric 3: https://scaledagileframework.com/guidance-applied-innovation-accounting-in-safe/ 4: https://support.scaledagile.com/s/article/Exam-Study-Guide-SDP-6-0-SAFe-for-DevOps 5: https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/devops/what-is-blue-green-deployment 6: https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/devguide/deploy-apps/blue-green.html 7: https://scaledagileframework.com/guidance-applied-innovation-accounting-in-safe/ 8: https://support.scaledagile.com/s/article/Exam-Study-Guide-SDP-6-0-SAFe-for-DevOps 9: https://scaledagileframework.com/continuous-integration/ 10: https://support.scaledagile.com/s/article/Exam-Study-Guide-SDP-6-0-SAFe-for-DevOps
