The Deployment Pipeline
Dan Thomas Mikita, Gerald DeHondt, George S. Nezlek · 2012
The ultimate goal of a software development process is the deployment of a quality piece of software. A deployment pipeline includes many aspects of software development that are rarely focused on by a development team. The proper development process should include as little manual testing and configuration as possible, while still confirming all of the functional and non-functional requirements that the system must satisfy. The business users, who are the most knowledgeable about the functional and non-functional requirements, also need to be directly involved in writing those tests. All dependencies should be known and managed consistently, with the objective of having a releasable application after every commit. This provides for a stable application, reliable development and production environments, consistent releases, and a product that meets a larger number of business goals.