Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment: A Systematic Review on Approaches, Tools, Challenges and Practices

摘要

Context: Continuous practices, i.e., continuous integration, delivery, anddeployment, are the software development industry practices that enableorganizations to frequently and reliably release new features and products.With the increasing interest in and literature on continuous practices, it isimportant to systematically review and synthesize the approaches, tools,challenges, and practices reported for adopting and implementing continuouspractices. Objective: This research aimed at systematically reviewing the stateof the art of continuous practices to classify approaches and tools, identifychallenges and practices in this regard, and identify the gaps for futureresearch. Method: We used systematic literature review (SLR) method forreviewing the peer-reviewed papers on continuous practices published between2004 and 1st June 2016. We applied thematic analysis method for analysing thedata extracted from reviewing 69 papers selected using predefined criteria.Results: We have identified thirty approaches and associated tools, whichfacilitate the implementation of continuous practices in the following ways:(1) "reducing build and test time in continuous integration (CI)"; (2)"increasing visibility and awareness on build and test results in CI"; (3)"supporting (semi-) automated continuous testing"; (4) "detecting violations,flaws and faults in CI"; (5) "addressing security and scalability issues indeployment pipeline", and (6) "improving dependability and reliability ofdeployment process". We have also determined a list of critical factors such as"testing (effort and time)", "team awareness and transparency", "good designprinciples", "customer", "highly skilled and motivated team", "applicationdomain", and "appropriate infrastructure" that should be carefully consideredwhen introducing continuous practices in a given organization.