"CI involves making small changes to software and then building and applying quality assurance processes. Defects do not only occur in the code, but also appear in naming conventions, documentation, how the software is designed, build scripts, the process of deploying the software to servers, and so on. CI forces the defects to emerge early, rather than waiting for software to be fully produced. If defects are caught in the later stages of the software development life cycle, the process will be more expensive. The cost of repair radically increases as soon as the bugs escape to production. Estimates suggest it is 100 to 1,000 times cheaper to capture defects early."

[Alan Mark Berg]