CI/CD Best Practices

6 Interactive Sessions

Short, interactive sessions: watch it work, try it, then build it yourself. You can go deeper at any time in the written chapters.

1. 1

   Why small changes, shipped often, are safer

   CI/CD replaces big, risky releases done by hand with a short, automatic, tested path from a change to the live system. Teams ship more often and break things less.

2. 2

   The pipeline: six stages, one job each

   A CI/CD pipeline is a fixed series of stages (commit, build, test, scan, deploy, observe). Each has one job, and the whole thing runs automatically, the same way every time.

3. 3

   Testing gates: what a green tick really checks

   A pipeline you can trust runs a series of automatic checks (tests, style and type checks, a coverage floor and a review). Each one stops the line when it fails, so bad code cannot move on.

4. 4

   Four ways to release a new version

   Match the way you release to the risk of the change, and always keep the undo fast. Then a release is a controlled decision, not a gamble.

5. 5

   Keeping secrets, and the pipeline, safe

   Protect both the pipeline and what it builds: keep secrets in a locked store, scan every change automatically, write infrastructure down as code that is reviewed, and give the pipeline only the access it needs.

6. 6

   Watch each release, and undo it fast

   Shipping fast is only safe if you can see what a release did and undo it quickly. Watching the live system and a practised undo close the loop.

How this certificate is scored

Your certificate shows how many of your written answers met the rubric below, checked by an AI grader. Anyone who checks your certificate sees it.

• You answer 6 short questions, one for each module, in your own words (at least 40 words each).
• An AI grader checks each answer against what its module asks for: it must answer the question, use the course's practice case specifically, and be correct.
• To pass, at least 5 of the 6 answers must meet that bar. The certificate says the answers were graded by AI.

The rubric

1. Module 1, Why CI/CD: The core case: small, tested, frequent changes are faster AND safer.
2. Module 2, The Pipeline: A pipeline mapped stage by stage — build, test, scan, deploy, observe.
3. Module 3, Testing Gates & Quality: A test pyramid and the gates that stop bad code from shipping.
4. Module 4, Deployment Strategies: The right release strategy for each change, with rollback kept fast.
5. Module 5, Secrets, IaC & Pipeline Security: A hardened pipeline: managed secrets, scans, IaC, least privilege.
6. Module 6, Observability & Rollback: Golden-signal monitoring and a fast, rehearsed rollback path.

What you walk away with