Build Your First CI/CD Pipeline

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 to the DevOps and QA space, I needed a safe, low-stakes environment to understand how automated workflows actually work. So I built a small personal playground: a Hugo-powered blog hosted in a GitHub repository and published via GitHub Pages. From there, I began adding the QA tools I used 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 walk through how to transition from 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 QA checks that now run automatically on every commit.

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