CI/CD Pipelines & Automation

What is CI/CD?

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (or Delivery). Together, they form a practice of automating the steps between writing code and getting it running in production.

Continuous Integration (CI) is about automatically testing and validating code every time it’s pushed to a shared repository. This means running unit tests, checking code quality, and ensuring your app still builds correctly.

Continuous Deployment (or Delivery) (CD) is about automating the release process—building, packaging, and deploying your app to staging or production without manual intervention.

CI/CD helps your team:
    •    Integrate changes often (multiple times a day)
    •    Catch bugs early, before they’re deployed
    •    Eliminate human error in builds and deployments
    •    Deploy small changes frequently and safely
    •    Respond faster to bugs, feedback, or new requirements

For example, with a proper CI/CD setup:
    •    A developer pushes code to GitHub
    •    Tests run automatically within minutes
    •    If everything passes, the app is deployed to a test environment
    •    With a single approval (or automatically), it then goes live

This replaces ad-hoc scripts, manual uploads, or “it works on my machine” deployments.

This is the modern workflow that underpins reliable software delivery, whether you’re building a Drupal site, a microservice, or a complex frontend app.

Why This Matters

Manual deployment processes are fragile, slow, and error-prone. CI/CD pipelines:

Catch bugs early with automated tests
Reduce downtime from misconfigured deploys
Allow faster iteration and safer releases
Enable smaller, incremental changes rather than risky “big bang” launches
Build trust across your team

Whether you’re deploying a monolithic Drupal site or a microservice app, CI/CD adds discipline and speed to your workflow.

What We Do

We design and implement pipelines that match your project’s needs, from simple build-and-deploy flows to multi-stage pipelines with approvals.

Typical deliverables include:

CI/CD setup using GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Azure Pipeline, GitLab CI, Bitbucket Pipelines, or others
Automated builds and artifact generation
Unit and functional test integration
Code linting and static analysis
Visual regression
Auto-deploy to dev/staging/production environments
Slack or email notifications for pipeline stages
Manual approval steps for sensitive deploys

We also document and version-control the pipelines themselves so they’re easy to update and audit.

Technologies We Use

GitHub Actions / CircleCI / Azure Pipeline / GitLab CI / Bitbucket Pipelines
Docker
PHPUnit, Behat, Diffy
Vortex(Opens in a new tab/window) – our open-source Drupal project template with bullet-proof CI configurations

Who This Is For

You’ll benefit from this service if:

You want repeatable deploys without relying on one “hero” developer
Your team wastes time deploying code or fixing post-deploy bugs
You have QA/staging environments that need syncing and testing before go-live
You want to ship faster without sacrificing stability

We support everything from small dev teams to large orgs with multi-branch and multi-env workflows.

Real Example

A client had four devs manually deploying code to staging via SFTP and command line. We introduced GitHub Actions with automated tests and deploys to Acquia, cutting their release process from 4 hours 20 minutes—and eliminating human error.

FAQs

Do I need tests to set up a pipeline?
Not necessarily. We can start with basic build and deploy steps, and add tests over time.

Can I control when things get deployed?
Yes. We can include manual approval steps, protected branches, and schedules to match your release strategy.

Can this integrate with Docker or Vortex?
Absolutely. Our pipelines often build and deploy Docker containers using custom Vortex workflows for Drupal.