JUC U.S. East 2015 - Jenkins Workflows with Parallel Steps Boosts Productivity and Quality

By: Tom Canova, IBM

Jenkins workflow automation accelerated and improved a critical development team process at IBM. This process includes running code to build a custom database that is integral to a production application. One of the code steps took 20+ hours to run before workflow automation and now takes two hours to complete. Anti-patterns from long running jobs were eliminated. The key for the solution was using Jenkins workflow in parallel steps. We will walk through how the workflow job runs as configured and the challenges associated with running tasks in parallel. With the workflow job in Jenkins, anyone on the team can now run their latest code to produce new ‘Chef Watson’ databases. No special knowledge is required. This has freed up the team to do what they do best, while letting Jenkins oversee the previously tedious task of running a variety of parsing steps. When someone makes code changes, now they quickly run this process across the full dataset and get fast feedback. As a result, quality issues are quickly identified and the database is delivered to production more frequently. Context will be provided on how this key process fits into the bigger continuous delivery picture. Attendees will see how Tom's team has boosted overall productivity and quality with Jenkins.