Continuous Integration: It's Not About the Tool

In the earliest days of agile development Continuous Integration (CI) began as a people practice. Teams focused on finding issues as soon as possible so they could rapidly adapt to change. As tools such as CruiseControl and others became available, the focus shifted to CI server feature sets, build management, and deployment pipelines. Paul Julius explains the stages through which development teams evolve as they adopt CI. All too often, teams allow CI to become the neglected integration server to which no one pays attention. Learn why the maximum benefits to be gained from CI come, not from the tool, but from a team inspired to do the right thing. Recall the Agile Manifesto principle, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools." Evaluate your team's current maturity level and devise a plan for helping grow from beginner CI practitioners to advanced and then on to extreme.