6 min
Your CI pipeline takes 25 minutes: where to start
A slow pipeline is not just an annoyance: it changes how the team works, for the worse. The three levers that almost always work.
When CI takes 25 minutes, people stop waiting for it. They merge before it finishes, open three branches in parallel and lose the link between a change and the test that breaks. The real cost is not machine time, it is the change in behaviour.
1. Cache dependencies
If every run downloads and installs everything from scratch, there are three to eight minutes being given away. Almost every CI platform caches the dependency directory with a key based on the lock file. It is the improvement with the highest return per hour invested.
2. Parallelise what does not depend on each other
Lint, type-check and unit tests do not need each other: they can run at the same time in separate jobs. End-to-end tests can be split across several runners. Total time becomes that of the slowest job, not the sum.
3. Do not repeat work between stages
If the build stage compiles the project and then the test stage compiles it again, you are paying twice. Sharing the compiled artifact between jobs removes that duplication.
How to build the full pipeline, with its stages and gates, is in the guide to continuous integration and delivery.
- CI/CD
- DevOps
- Productivity
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