We're compelled to caution, again, against creating a single CI instance for all teams. While it's a nice idea in theory to consolidate and centralize Continuous Integration (CI) infrastructure, in reality we do not see enough maturity in the tools and products in this space to achieve the desired outcome. Software delivery teams which must use the centralized CI offering regularly have long delays depending on a central team to perform minor configuration tasks, or to troubleshoot problems in the shared infrastructure and tooling. At this stage, we continue to recommend that organizations limit their centralized investment to establishing patterns, guidelines and support for delivery teams to operate their own CI infrastructure.
We're compelled to caution, again, against creating a single CI instance for all teams. While it's a nice idea in theory to consolidate and centralize Continuous Integration (CI) infrastructure, in reality we do not see enough maturity in the tools and products in this space to achieve the desired outcome. Software delivery teams which must use the centralized CI offering regularly have long delays depending on a central team to perform minor configuration tasks, or to troubleshoot problems in the shared infrastructure and tooling. At this stage, we continue to recommend that organizations limit their centralized investment to establishing patterns, guidelines and support for delivery teams to operate their own CI infrastructure.
There might be the impression that it's easier to manage a single CI (Continuous Integration) instance for all teams because it gives them a single configuration and monitoring point. But a bloated instance that is shared by every team in an organization can cause a lot of damage. We have found that problems like build timeouts, configuration conflicts and gigantic build queues appear more frequently. Having this single point of failure can interrupt the work of many teams. Carefully consider the trade-off between these pitfalls and having a single point of configuration. In organizations with multiple teams, we recommend having CI instances distributed by teams, with enterprise decisions based not on the single CI installation but on defining guidelines about the instances' selection and configuration.
