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Jenkins is a Java-based Continuous Integration (CI) server that supports the discovery of defects early in the software cycle. Thanks to over 400 plugins, Jenkins communicates with many types of systems, building and triggering a wide variety of tests.
CI involves making small changes to software, and then building and applying quality assurance processes. Defects do not only occur in the code but also appear in the naming conventions, documentation, how the software is designed, build scripts, the process of deploying the software to servers, and so on. Continuous integration forces the defects to emerge early, rather than waiting for software to be fully produced. If defects are caught in
the later stages of the software development lifecycle, the process will be more expensive. The cost of repair radically increases as soon as the bugs escape to production. Estimates suggest it is 100 to 1000 times cheaper to capture defects early. Effective use of a CI server, such as Jenkins, could be the difference between enjoying a holiday and working unplanned hours to heroically save the day. As you can imagine, in my day job as a Senior Developer
with aspirations to Quality Assurance, I like long boring days, at least for mission-critical production environments.
Jenkins can automate the building of software regularly, and trigger tests pulling in the results and failing based on defined criteria. Failing early through build failure lowers the costs, increases confidence in the software produced, and has the potential to morph subjective processes into an aggressive metrics-based process that the development team feels is unbiased. |
