The delivery pipeline not only ensures what is released is stable and controlled, but also enables this to be done rapidly. A pipeline can potentially enable every source commit to be a release candidate. The pipeline needs to be built out in distinct steps, each removing different kinds of risks from the delivery process. The following is an example of a build pipeline:
You will need to define a pipeline that is appropriate to your technology and organizational process.
The first step is the traditional CI step. This ensures that the code base is built and is unit tested. It is important to keep the build and unit test process to a very short time, thus allowing developers to receive rapid feedback on their changes. It is also necessary to perform a more complete test of the code base in a deployed or semi-deployed form. This can be divided into integration tests and acceptance tests; whatever approach you take for this, the acceptance tests will generally be...