CI/CD is a development practice where changes to code, configurations, or metadata are automatically tested, integrated, and deployed through an automated pipeline. 

Why CI/CD matters for Salesforce teams

Without CI/CD, Salesforce teams often face deployment challenges like manual errors and increased risk of downtime resulting from misaligned orgs and many users pushing changes simultaneously and overriding each other’s work. 

The benefits of CI/CD for Salesforce are not as simple as "faster deployments" as some would suggest:‍

• Higher quality: Quality gates make sure changes are not deployed unless they are tested and approved by team-members, ensuring fewer bugs and more stable environments.
• Collaboration through visibility and transparency: Transparency of incoming changes and better visibility of teammates’ work lead to better collaboration and change planning, as well as ability to identify conflicts when several team-members make changes in the same area. 
• Easier troubleshooting: Version control and change history enables the team to easily discover when the bad change happened and the content of the change itself, leading to faster revert or recovery. 
• More effective use of the team’s time: Developers and admins spend less time troubleshooting or fixing bugs and more time innovating and delivering on business needs.

Key CI/CD principles

When thinking about CI/CD frameworks, there are several key principles that are introduced to development process:

• Introducing Git: Changes in org configuration reach Git before they are deployed. 
• Triggering automatic actions: Events in Git enable us to automatically perform pre-deployment checks (like validations, tests, static code analysis tools, etc.)
• Review and approval gates: Team members can review suggested changes and approve them before deployment.
• Conflict resolution: Should someone else touch the same area before deployment - a conflict is raised, avoiding deleting other team members' changes
• Automatic deployments: Promotion to higher environments can also be fully or partially automated

Challenges implementing CI/CD for Salesforce

As opposed to classic software development, CI/CD for Salesforce involves unique challenges:

• Not everything in Salesforce can be textually represented (data records, CPQ). Including these types of records adds substantial complexity when working with Git (which is, as mentioned, the foundation of CI/CD processes).
• Some changes in higher shared environments, like UAT or even production, are made directly through the service UI. Reasons for that could be more valid - like limited APIs which prevent you from changing through code - or less valid, like the temptation of “saving time” through bypassing lower environments and making changes directly in production. Changes made directly in the UI may lead to outdated textual representations in Git content as opposed to the actual org configuration (drift). 
• Different orgs in the pipeline are drifting from one another, making it hard to maintain shared Git history for all orgs. This may challenge your chosen Git branching strategy for Salesforce.

Best practices for Salesforce CI/CD

DevOps in general, and CI/CD as part of it, is a mindset of continuous learning and improvement. In this context, some best practices that will set you up for success include:

• Starting small: Begin with a simple pipeline and gradually expand its capabilities.
• Automating where it matters most: Focus on automating repetitive, high-impact tasks like testing and validations.
• Monitoring and iterate: Continuously measure pipeline performance and adjust to optimize results.
• Fostering collaboration: Ensure developers, admins, and stakeholders align on CI/CD processes and goals.
• Evaluating DevOps enhancements: Salesforce DevOps tools, like Salto, are aimed to help you focus on the changes you need to make, and less on the process making them. Introducing them into your process will allow you to more easily integrate less technical people into the pipeline and overcome some of the challenges mentioned above (like managing complex metadata types like profiles, layouts and flows, etc.).

CI/CD is more than a technical upgrade—it’s a cultural shift that empowers Salesforce teams to innovate quickly while maintaining reliability and control. Our DevOps experts are happy to help you get started on your CI/CD path, book a 1:1 session here, or start on your own with our free trial.

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