What is CI/CD and how does test automation fit into the pipeline?

 

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery/Deployment):

• CI (Integration): The practice of frequently merging all developers' code changes into a central repository (e.g., Git) and automatically verifying the build with fast, automated tests.

• CD (Delivery/Deployment): The practice of reliably preparing and ultimately deploying code changes to production.

Test Automation's Role: Test automation is the engine of the CI/CD pipeline.

• Gatekeeper: Automated tests are configured in the CI server (like Jenkins) to run immediately after every code commit.

• Quality Check: If the Smoke, Unit, and API tests fail, the build is marked as broken, and the deployment process stops immediately, preventing defective code from progressing.

• Tooling: Jenkins pulls code from Git (Version Control), uses Maven (Build Tool) to compile, and triggers TestNG (Test Runner) to execute the automated test suites.