The first practice of Continuous Integration is purely process-based. Code branches should be as small as possible and merged back into the main code as frequently as possible. In this way it is easy to identify the causes of issues found and rollbacks are small.

Source code management (SCM) is used to track modifications to a source code repository. SCM tracks a running history of changes to a code base and helps resolve conflicts when merging updates from multiple contributors. SCM is also synonymous with Version control.

Build tools are programs that automate the creation of executable applications from source code. Building incorporates compiling, linking and packaging the code into a usable or executable form. In small projects, developers will often manually invoke the build process. This is not practical for larger projects, where it is very hard to keep track of what needs to be built, in what sequence and what dependencies there are in the building process. Using an automation tool allows the build process to be more consistent.

A binary artifact repository stores binary artifacts along with the metadata in a defined directory structure, conceptually similar to a source code repository.

Unit Testing is a type of software testing where individual units or components of a software are tested. The purpose is to validate that each unit of the software code performs as expected.

Integration Testing is defined as a type of testing where software modules are integrated logically and tested as a group.

The Automated Tests Execution Engine sets up and executes automated tests against a software application, assessing and reporting on their results against expected behaviour. Automated tests provide feedback to developers within minutes, to accelerate delivery cycles and realise returns on investment sooner.

The Code Quality manger assesses code for resource leaks, null pointer references, security vulnerabilities, adherence to organisational coding standards and test coverage.

The Automation Server provides the framework to trigger and orchestrate the tools which build, test and inspect committed code, report on the results and store output.