Why is continuous integration crucial?
The answer is straightforward: CI practices are critical because they enable teams to fulfill modern software development demands. But what are these demands, what benefits of CI help fulfill these demands, and how do they do so? This is what we'll look at in this section.
A faster time to market (TTM)
Also known as lead time or time to delivery, TTM is the time it takes a feature to get from its origin (typically a code change) to deployment in production. A higher TTM number indicates that features are being developed, tested, and delivered more slowly and infrequently. Most current software programs and services need more frequent software upgrades. So, let’s see some advantages of CI/CD that help achieve a lower TTM value:
Figure 1.12: Time to market (TTM)
Freedom from long integration – avoiding tolls
CI advocates for regular integration of your work with the main code. This method...