A Jenkins pipeline consists of two kinds of elements: stages and steps. The following figure shows how they are used:
The following are the basic pipeline elements:
- Step: A single operation (tells Jenkins what to do, for example, checkout code from repository, execute a script)
- Stage: A logical separation of steps (groups conceptually distinct sequences of steps, for example, Build, Test, and Deploy) used to visualize the Jenkins pipeline progress
Technically, it's possible to create parallel steps; however, it's better to treat it as an exception when really needed for optimization purposes.