CICDReife

CICDReife, or CI/CD maturity, is a framework concept used to assess and improve the maturity of an organization's continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines. It focuses on automation, testing, deployment practices, governance, and feedback loops across the software delivery lifecycle.

The concept covers several dimensions, including automation depth, pipeline coverage, quality practices such as automated testing, infrastructure as code, release management, monitoring, and governance. A mature CICDReife implies repeatable, auditable, and safe releases with minimal manual intervention and rapid feedback.

Maturity levels are commonly described in progressive stages. Level 1, the Initial stage, describes ad hoc, manual builds and deployments with little or no automated testing. Level 2, Managed, includes automated builds and a basic test suite, though some steps may still require manual intervention. Level 3, Defined, uses standardized pipelines, comprehensive automated testing, infrastructure as code, and automated security scans. Level 4, Quantitatively Managed, adds metrics-driven optimization, canary releases, and automated governance. Level 5, Optimizing, enables continuous delivery to production with end-to-end automation, self-service pipelines, rapid rollback, and proactive risk management.

Assessment and metrics commonly used to determine CICDReife include automated test coverage, pipeline lead time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, time to recovery, occurrences of manual interventions, security scanning coverage, and the maturity of infrastructure as code practices.

Applications of CICDReife include guiding improvement programs, aligning teams, and reducing risk. Higher maturity generally correlates with faster delivery and improved reliability, though it requires cultural change, tooling investment, and ongoing governance. It is related to concepts such as DevOps, continuous deployment, and value stream management.