• Version control system (VCS) to track changes to configurations, code and metadata helping teams create and manage a trial of changes.
• Continuous integration servers like Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI help automate the build, test, and integration of code changes into a shared directory. Now this can trigger build jobs when code changes are pushed to the Version Control System. CI pipelines also include automated testing to ensure code changes do not introduce defects. Salesforce-specific testing frameworks like Apex unit tests can also be used to automate tests.
• Continuous delivery pipelines automate the Code deployment of validated changes to Salesforce environments like sandboxes and production. These pipelines ensure that the environment is accurately configured and can effectively automate the provisioning of sandboxes and data setup. We will get into this in the next section.
• Managing these sandboxes for development and testing, including refreshing and cloning, is important to maintaining consistency and preserving the data integrity in the application.
• Real-time monitoring tools like Salesforce Health Check help detect issues in Salesforce environments and provide insights into performance and reliability.
• Salesforce DevOps comprises practices for monitoring and enforcing compliance with industry regulations and internal policies.

1. Define Goals and Requirements

• Understand Business Objectives and align the DevOps pipeline goals.
• Define KPIs like deployment frequency, change failure rate, mean time to recovery, etc.

2. Set Up Version Control

• Choose a Version Control System (VCS) like Git for managing source code.
• Implement a branching strategy (such as GitFlow, trunk-based development).

3. Configure Development Environment

• Use Salesforce Developer Experience (DX) for a modern development workflow.
• Create and manage temporary Salesforce environments for development and testing.

4. Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD)

• Use tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or CircleCI.
• Implement automated unit tests, integration tests, and static code analysis.
• Integrate peer code reviews before merging with main branches.
• Use CI/CD tools to automate deployments to different environments (development, staging, production).
• Ensure consistency across different environments.
• Have a rollback strategy in place for failed deployments.

5. Quality Assurance

• Incorporate end-to-end tests, regression tests, and performance tests.
• Conduct manual testing for complex user scenarios.
• Ensure UAT is part of the pipeline for final verification by stakeholders.

6. Monitoring and Logging

• Implement monitoring tools (e.g., New Relic, Splunk) to track performance and errors.
• Collect and analyse logs for troubleshooting and auditing purposes.

7. Security Integration

• Integrate SAST tools to identify vulnerabilities early in the development process.
• Use DAST tools to find runtime vulnerabilities.

8. Feedback Loop

• Establish feedback loops between development, QA, and operations teams.
• Regularly conduct retrospectives to identify and address areas for improvement.

9. Documentation and Training

• Maintain detailed documentation for the DevOps processes and tools used.
• Provide continuous training for the team on best practices, tools, and new features.

10. Tool Integration

• Ensure all tools (version control, CI/CD, monitoring, testing) are well integrated.
• Maintain a single source of truth for all configurations and code.

11. Scalability and Performance Optimization

• Continuously optimise the pipeline for performance and scalability.
• Use scalable infrastructure (e.g., cloud-based solutions) to handle varying loads.

12. Examples of Toolchain

• Version Control: Git, GitHub
• CI/CD: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CircleCI
• Testing: Selenium, ACCELQ, JUnit, Apex tests
• Monitoring: New Relic, Splunk
• Security: SonarQube, OWASP ZAP