A Gate-Model Approach to Test Layer Scheduling in CI/CD Pipelines and its Effect on Deployment Frequency
Keywords:
CI/CD, gate model, trigger model, DORA metrics, deployment frequency, test decomposition, Shift-LeftAbstract
The article examines a gate model for scheduling test layers in CI/CD pipelines and its effect on deployment frequency, feedback speed, and the resilience of software delivery processes. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing complexity of microservice systems and by the limitations of monolithic E2E runs, which slow down change validation, increase infrastructure load, and reduce confidence in automated testing results. The aim of the work is to develop and empirically verify an architecture that links test layers with discrete quality gates and software development lifecycle events. The article's scientific novelty lies in formalizing the relationship among test granularity, trigger-based execution schedules, and CI/CD pipeline throughput. It is shown that moving lightweight checks to the commit and Pull Request stages, while retaining E2E tests in the schedule, enables reducing total test execution time by 90%, decreasing flakiness from 25% to 2%, and increasing deployment frequency to multiple deployments per day. The article will be useful for DevOps engineers, system architects, QA leads, and software engineering researchers.
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