Testing, Quality Assurance and CI/CD Pipelines Testing, QA, and CI/CD pipelines are parts of one smooth workflow. Unit tests catch bugs in small pieces, QA checks overall value, and CI/CD automates building, testing, and delivery. When these parts work together, teams release more confidently and with fewer surprises.
What to test Unit tests for individual functions and small modules Integration tests for how parts talk to each other End-to-end tests that mirror real user actions Performance tests to measure speed under load Accessibility tests to confirm usable interfaces Security tests to find common flaws Building a reliable pipeline Use a single source of truth: the repository plus a shared test suite Run tests automatically on every push and pull request Include linting and static analysis before runtime tests Run tests in parallel and cache dependencies to save time Separate environments for development, staging, and production-ready artifacts Quality gates and feedback Define clear pass criteria: all tests green, lint clean, security clear Gate releases with lightweight code reviews in critical areas Monitor flaky tests and track test coverage over time Practical example On push to main, run unit tests and integration tests In parallel, perform static analysis and linting Build an artifact and deploy to a staging environment Run end-to-end tests in staging; if they pass, promote to production with a controlled release Key Takeaways A well-designed pipeline catches issues early and reduces manual toil Automating tests and checks speeds up development with better reliability Clear gates and ongoing monitoring keep quality steady over time