Pipelines are the Buick of Test Automation

Driving a Buick always feels nice. Still nothing is perfect. Not Jenkins, not Bamboo, not TeamCity, not Octopus, or even driving a Buick. There is always some chance of imperfection that comes with the human factor. You and me.?

Refactoring your code that is not under test 2% at a time is like climbing a mountain. My personal trainer told me, that improving 2% every week will triple my overall results in 55 weeks.?

At a 2% rate of evolution, you rewrite your system 3 times over in a year.

Repeating an exercise over and over, like the repeatable actions of a build pipeline, the software factory, your continuous testing, company delivered artefacts with standard release reports and other finesse become your best friend. You are constantly aware of the direction you are heading, and, if you take a step backwards it should be easy to steer your delivery out of the storm.

Which is why we think of and live by the rules of our engagement. Build a standard process and agree on a vocabulary and routine. You can salsa all night long, when you know the steps. Here is one example of some basic ideas to compartmentalize your complexity. My pipeline rules of engagement.

• Begin. This is the hardest part.
• Checkout. Choose your battles and commit.
• Build. Use your weapons of choice, your tech stack, your rules. Hooray, it compiles.
• Setup. Pom. Yaml. Docker. Json. Xml. Bash.
• Authenticate. LDAP. Kerberos. SHA-1. AUTH0.
• Test. Execute a test. Execute other tests. Capture the behavior. Collect the evidence.
• Report. Not too much and not too little information. Compile it in readable form.
• Publish. Less is more.
• End. The fat lady sings. Plan for new beginnings.

Tests can be orchestrated in a certain way, which can not impact the order of things, it is fairly easy to work in that context. Even in large organizations.

Publish in a standard way, to revert, take your steps backwards when you step in a pile of doo doo.?

Pipelines are your fleet of Buick luxury cars, but you still have to drive them. You can polish them. You can finish big. You can trust your process. You can rinse, increment 2% and repeat until you take her to the next big car show.

The author wishes to help the development environment hold the weather and reduce the number of disappointments experienced by millions of people in everyday life.