97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know

Chapter 20. Continuously Integrate

Dave Bartlett is an enthusiastic software professional with more than 25 years' experience as a programmer, developer, architect, manager, consultant, and instructor. He currently works for clients through Commotion Technologies, Inc., a private consulting firm, and lectures at Penn State University's Graduate Engineering School in Great Valley, Pennsylvania. His main work efforts today are with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, helping to design and build web, portal, and composite applications for use within the Federal Reserve System and the United States Treasury.

—David Bartlett

THE BUILD AS A "BIG BANG" EVENT in project development is dead. The architect, whether an application or enterprise architect, should promote and encourage the use of continuous integration methods and tools for every project.

The term continuous integration (CI) was first coined by Martin Fowler in a design pattern. CI refers to a set practices and tools that ensure automatic builds and testing of an application at frequent intervals, usually on an integration server specifically configured for these tasks. The convergence of unit testing practices and tools in conjunction with automated build tools makes CI a must for any software project today.

Continuous integration targets a universal characteristic of the software development process: the integration point ...