What does the integration of quality gates in CI/CD pipelines aim to improve?

The integration of quality gates in CI/CD pipelines primarily aims to enhance release quality and reliability. Quality gates serve as checkpoints throughout the CI/CD process, ensuring that certain predefined criteria or quality standards are met before allowing code to progress to the next stage of the pipeline. This means that code changes must pass automated tests, code reviews, or security checks, significantly reducing the likelihood of defects or issues being introduced into production.

By incorporating quality gates, teams can systematically catch bugs, performance issues, or security vulnerabilities early in the development cycle. This results in a more stable and reliable software release, as issues can be addressed before they impact users. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring that each release adheres to the established quality metrics, ultimately leading to a better end-user experience.

While speed, security, and cost-effectiveness are certainly important aspects of a CI/CD pipeline, the primary focus of integrating quality gates is on maintaining and improving the quality and reliability of software releases.