DevOps Dictionary

Continuous Integration is a software development practice where engineers merge small code changes into a shared main branch frequently, and each change is automatically built and tested by a CI system (a pipeline that runs checks like compilation, unit tests, and style rules). It addresses the problem of “integration pain” when teams work in isolation for too long and conflicts, broken builds, or hidden regressions surface late. At a high level, CI works by triggering a repeatable set of validations on every commit or pull request, providing fast feedback and blocking changes that fail agreed quality gates.

With Continuous Integration, issues are caught close to the change that introduced them, making fixes cheaper and releases more predictable; without it, defects and merge conflicts accumulate, failures appear late in the cycle, and delivery becomes riskier and more disruptive. This gap exists because frequent, automated verification reduces the time between cause and detection, turning integration into an everyday routine rather than a high-stakes event.