CI/CD pipelines in low-code / no-code environments

Organizations are used to setting up CI/CD (Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment) pipelines into their regular SDLC developments. From build to deployment, a series of steps to deliver new applications. There are a number of tools used in the pipeline, most of them depending on the development languages being used.

However, in low-code no-code environments such as Salesforce, ServiceNow and SharePoint, there is a lot of manual work to be done to implement a CI / CD process. This makes it very difficult to achieve the main benefits of a CI/CD pipeline. Architects need to write their own tools within these SaaS platforms or do a large number of manual steps to achieve something close to a proper CI/CD pipeline.

CI/CD pipelines

Companies embracing low-code / no-code tools as a way to deliver fast solutions at an affordable cost must have proper controls in place to mitigate the risk of breaking the benefits these platforms bring. To make it even more difficult, the citizen developer initiatives companies set up, bring additional risks into the equation. Inexperienced ‘developers’ want to deploy their apps without any quality mechanisms in place.

Each step of the pipeline shown in the diagram above, needs proper control to ensure quality at the source. The coding stage needs code reviews to ensure adherence to best practices. Then the app is compiled in the build stage. In the above mentioned platforms, as there is no compilation of the code, it would be similar to analyse the new functionality as a whole, not unitarily, either in a Git repository or in the target instance. The test stage needs to cover a proper scope, test cases and execution with their pass (or fail) criteria. Finally the release and deploy stages need their control checks in the form of release management and quality checks.

The Quality Clouds CI/CD approach for Salesforce, ServiceNow and Office 365

Within the next few weeks we will cover each stage more in detail as well as how Quality Clouds can help organisations automate their CI/CD pipeline, to achieve faster deployments at higher quality rates.