Improving the Robustness and Efficiency of Continuous Integration and Deployment

Abstract

Modern software is developed at a rapid pace. To sustain that rapid pace, organizations rely heavily on automated build, test, and release steps. To that end, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) services take the incremental codebase changes that are produced by developers, compile them, link, and package them into software deliverables, verify their functionality, and deliver them to end users. While CI/CD processes provide mission-critical features, if they are misconfigured or poorly operated, the pace of development may be slowed or even halted. To prevent such issues, in this thesis, we set out to study and improve the robustness and efficiency of CI/CD. The thesis will include (1) conceptual contributions in the form of empirical studies of large samples of adopters of CI/CD tools to discover best practices and common limitations, as well as (2) technical contributions in the form of tools that support stakeholders to avoid common limitations (e.g., data misinterpretation issues, CI configuration mistakes).