What exactly does CI/CD mean?

I often see people confusing the terms Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment. Let’s break it down in simpler terms.

Continuous Integration (CI) involves developers merging their tested code into a common branch. Depending on the branching strategy used, this can be as often as multiple times a day, or a few times a week. The next phase is Continuous Delivery (CD). Here, we need to make sure to package the code in an artifact and store it somewhere - this is our release artifact. Finally, there is Continuous Deployment (CD). This takes Continuous Delivery (CD) a step further by sending our finished release artifact out into the real world for people to use. It’s all about making things smoother and faster!