From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Agile, Explained: Continuous Integration Description: This video explores continuous integration, a key workflow process in Agile development intended to minimize the time and effort needed to integrate new code from multiple developers. Agile is an approach to software development that encourages collaboration across an organization and allows requirements to evolve as a program progresses. Related GAO Works: GAO-20-713SP: Science & Tech Spotlight: Agile Software Development; and GAO-20-590G: Agile Assessment Guide: Best Practices for Agile Adoption and Implementation Released: September 2020 [ Narrator: ] Agile is an approach to software development that encourages collaboration across an organization. This video explores a key workflow process in Agile development known as continuous integration. Continuous integration is intended to minimize the time and effort needed to integrate new code form multiple developers. Here's how it works. As different team members develop features for a software program, they test them against the most current version of the entire program, known as the build. If the developer's new code passes the test, it is integrated into the build. If the new code fails, it's the developer's responsibility to fix the code until it passes. You can see how this might be useful when there are a lot of different developers working on different parts of the same program. Instead of merging everything at once at the end, and hoping it all works together, the team is continuously merging and testing new code. This process is automated to help developers react in real time to updates and to provide version control for the final product. This is especially important as the build expands and the code becomes more complex. Continuous integration reduces risk and allows developers catch bugs more quickly, helping them deliver a product with few defects at any point in development.