Every great software team wants to move fast — but without a strong CI/CD pipeline, speed quickly turns into chaos. Bugs slip through. Tests fail silently. Pull requests sit unreviewed for days. The result? Slower delivery and frustrated engineers. A well-architected CI/CD pipeline isn’t just automation — it’s your team’s feedback loop, safety net, and secret weapon for continuous improvement. Let’s explore how to build one that ensures every pull request meets world-class standards before it ever reaches production.

Let’s begin with the “why.” Why do we need a CI/CD pipeline for a new change request?

With a new change being introduced into the code base, we need to know the following about this change:

does it still compile when introduced?

if there is a change to what the user views, is that still functioning as expected?

are the different logical branches for the change introduced still functioning as expected when executed?

are there actors that consume the code base, that may be affected with the new change being introduced?

are there any vulnerabilities exposed from the change being introduced?

can the change be proved with corresponding tests? e.g. unit, ui, etc.

is the change focused and of a single scope?

These are some of the many questions a developer can ask themselves when looking to introduce a change into a code base. However, we can surely answer them with a functioning pipeline.

The CI/CD pipeline is the arena to answer the above questions that developers have. On pull-request creation, it should start it’s process to ensure all the questions are answered prior to a developer reviewing code. It is a feedback loop for ensuring quality of the pull-request. Let’s take a look at the stages we can setup as part of the CI/CD pipeline.