Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery or Deployment (CI/CD) is a development practice where code (or documentation) changes are automatically tested and prepared for release as soon as they’re submitted. Continuous integration validates each change against the existing codebase right away, catching conflicts early. Continuous delivery ensures those validated changes are packaged and ready to ship at any time. Continuous deployment takes it a step further by releasing changes to production automatically, without manual approval.
Why This Matters for Technical Writers
CI/CD pipelines are where docs-as-code workflows come to life. When documentation lives in version-controlled repositories alongside code, it can be pulled into the same pipeline: automatically built, checked for broken links or formatting errors, and published when changes are merged. This means documentation updates ship with the product, rather than after it. Understanding CI/CD helps technical writers participate more effectively in engineering workflows, advocate for documentation checks in the pipeline, and maintain content that stays current as software evolves.
Common Confusion
CI/CD is often used as a single term, but the two halves do different things. CI is about validating changes; CD is about releasing them.
Another common mix-up is between continuous delivery and continuous deployment. They sound identical but aren’t. Continuous delivery means changes are ready to ship and require a manual decision to release. Continuous deployment removes that manual step entirely. Not every team uses both, and not every pipeline goes all the way to automatic deployment.
Related Terms
docs-as-code, version control, pipeline, repository, DDLC, knowledge system