Software development today is evolving at an unprecedented rate. To keep up with market trends and meet customer demands, development teams often need to work within tight deadlines to deploy new features and software releases as quickly as possible. In order to achieve such short release cycles it is necessary to implement a seamless CI pipeline that automates the integration of code changes and enables faster software delivery.
In this case study, we will talk with Andrii Kovalov, our talented Python Engineer, to delve into a real-world problem our engineering team faced and explore how we resolved it with a custom-developed CI Orchestrator.
Background
Large-scale projects pose a unique set of challenges, especially when it comes to managing the CI workflow. We have a client with a large-scale project involving multiple developers working simultaneously on different features. Since the project grew further and development cycles became more complicated, we started facing complexities with the CI workflow. Rapid and regular deployment of changes became a critical requirement.
“The client’s development ecosystem consisted of a network of interdependent projects, each with its unique set of dependencies and requirements. As the number of projects and dependencies increased, manual management of builds and deployments became time-consuming and challenging, which negatively influenced the overall software delivery process.”
To overcome these challenges, the client requested a tailored solution that would automate the generation of artifacts, ensure consistency across projects, and promote a more efficient and reliable CI workflow.
Challenge
As the client’s challenges stemmed from the complex network of interdependent projects, we conducted a thorough analysis and identified 2 main issues with the existing CI workflow:
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Dependency Updating. With a great number of projects and subprojects, each with its specific dependencies between different services and components, dependency updating became a difficult task. Changes in one area could trigger unforeseen consequences in others.
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Coordination Challenges. Since the project was developed by multiple teams in different time zones, the lack of a centralized solution led to difficulties in coordinating and synchronizing development efforts. It was challenging for teams to understand the status of ongoing tasks, identify issues, and collaborate effectively.
“Handling multiple projects dependent on each other, at times even sub-sub-dependent, can be a real puzzle – especially when you work with different teams spread across different time zones. You end up doing a ton of manual work and lots of back-and-forth, “empty” communication. The task gets even trickier when you’re trying to release something on one project that could have a domino effect on another.”
Solution
The project needed a solution that could automate the processes of integrating code changes while still allowing human control for critical decision-making points. Since we couldn’t find an existing solution that met all of our requirements, we decided to develop a custom CI Orchestrator.
“Our goal was to create an orchestrator that could automate routine tasks – like updating dependencies between multiple repositories and generating dev artifacts – while allowing developers to retain control over essential aspects of the code integration process. Now, our custom CI solution serves as the central hub, providing end-to-end visibility and control over the software delivery process.”
The development of our custom CI Orchestrator involved two main phases:
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Design, planning, and implementation of the core logic. This phase involved conceptualizing the orchestrator, outlining key features, and implementing the solution’s core logic.
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Integration of the CI system into the client’s infrastructure. During the second phase, we focused on configuring the CI Orchestrator to align with the client’s infrastructure, ensuring compatibility and seamless interaction with existing systems.
As a result of our efforts, we built a solution with the following key features:
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Centralized management. The Orchestrator centralizes the management of the entire CI pipeline, allowing all team members to monitor and control the integration of code changes.
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Automated dependency updates. The generation of new artifacts in our source repositories triggers our CI orchestrator, which then ensures that the destination repositories are automatically updated with the necessary dependencies. By automating this process, we save a lot of time that would be otherwise spent on manual dependency updates.
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Simplified workflow. The orchestrator automates manual steps in the CI workflow, reducing the need for human interventions and minimizing the risk of errors.
Benefits
The implementation of the custom CI orchestrator brought significant improvements to the client’s software development process:
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Improved development process. The integration of the CI orchestrator allowed us to reduce the time spent on manual deployment, which accelerated development timelines.
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Enhanced visibility. The orchestrator provides real-time visibility for the entire team. It is possible to easily track the progress of builds and identify any bottlenecks or issues, which makes the release process smoother.
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Reduced errors. By automating the build of artifacts and applying updates to dependent repositories, the orchestrator reduces integration conflicts, ensuring that multiple developers can work simultaneously without hindering each other’s progress.
“The implementation of the CI orchestrator has been a great relief for me. I no longer have to create multiple artifacts and keep in mind maps of dependencies and sub-dependencies. It saved me a lot of time and effort. For other team members, it has led to increased visibility, which allowed us to achieve a more rapid development process. We can now build and push as many development artifacts as we need, constantly keeping track of the development process, fixing issues, and making changes as necessary. ”
Bottom line
To sum it all up, the implementation of the custom CI Orchestrator has significantly improved the overall software development process. Besides addressing the initial challenges of the project, the solution has become the foundation of a more efficient, collaborative, and error-resistant software development environment.
“In general, I see very positive outcomes of the CI development. Automating this area of the infrastructure helped us free up developers’ time, allowing them to focus on more important tasks. On top of that, we have been able to improve the development processes, increase the development speed, and streamline visibility. Now, any team member can build various artifacts and push them up to the top, it enables faster deployment and makes the results of a feature visible to everyone.”