How do you learn how CI/CD pipelines work when your workplace systems feel too complex or risky to experiment with? When I pivoted from creating Drupal tutorials into the DevOps and QA space, I needed a safe, low-stakes environment to understand how automated workflows really function. So I built a small personal playground: a Hugo-powered blog, stored in a GitHub repository and published through GitHub Pages. From there, I began adding the QA tools I was used to using at work to see how they could run automatically in my personal deployment pipeline. That hands-on exploration helped me understand more complex DevOps workflows and gave me ownership of quality checks for my own site.
In this session, we’ll place CI/CD pipelines within the broader QA landscape. I’ll share an overview of the types of quality checks people rely on, including content linting, accessibility checks, link validation, code style tools, and how different roles use them to check their own work and review others’ code. Then we’ll walk through how to transition from an in-editor check to a local command-line tool, to an automated step inside a CI/CD workflow.
I’ll show you how I built my first CI/CD pipeline and how I iteratively added simple QA checks that now run automatically on every commit. We’ll examine the GitHub Action that powers my pipeline, and I’ll also share small, parallel examples of how the same workflow would appear in GitLab CI/CD and Bitbucket Pipelines.
Attendees will leave with:
- A clear, beginner-friendly mental model of CI/CD
- Practical QA tools that they can run manually, locally, or in automation
- A personal deployment workflow that they can recreate immediately
- Confidence to continue exploring DevOps through small, safe, meaningful steps
