Continuous Integration and Continuous Development have become hugely popular. Even reports that seem to indicate slow adoption tell a different story when you look closely A recent report by Digital Ocean found that 42% of the developers and administrators surveyed don't use CI/CD. Of these, 46% (or 19% of all surveyed) said they didn't think their workflow would get any benefit. Some analysts see this as a sign of slow adoption, but it's not as significant as it might seem. A majority are using the process, and over 80% see some value in it.

The survey skews heavily toward small companies. Of the people surveyed, 38% work for companies with 1 to 5 employees, and another 17% with 6 to 25 employees. That's total employees, and few companies employ only developers. A lot of projects have just one or two developers. When the team and the project are small, they often don't see much need for any formal process.

Even so, tiny teams and even individuals can benefit from CI and CD. Frequent releases help to keep a project under control, even when there's just one developer. Automated test and build cycles are useful for small companies as well as big ones. In some ways, they're especially helpful where there isn't a big team. Where there's little human feedback, it's easy to go off on a tangent. The developers may waste a lot of time before discovering they've gone in the wrong direction.

The large majority of those surveyed consider CI/CD beneficial, even if some are slow to adopt it. The methodology's use has grown rapidly and will keep on growing. Large teams may gain the most obvious rewards, but any project can stay better on track with its discipline.

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