5 exercises on the language of continuous integration and delivery — triggering pipelines, running stages, promoting artifacts, and gating releases.
Key verb–noun pairs in this set
trigger a pipeline — on push, PR, tag or schedule
run a stage — pipeline → stages → jobs → steps
promote an artifact — build once, promote up
gate a release & fail fast
retry a flaky job; keep the pipeline as code
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
A new commit lands on the main branch and the CI run starts automatically. Which verb describes what the commit does to the pipeline?
A commit (or PR, tag, or schedule) triggers a pipeline — this is the standard CI/CD verb. Collocations: trigger a build, trigger a pipeline on push, a manual trigger, a scheduled trigger, trigger on pull request. The thing that starts a run is the trigger (noun).
activate, ignite, and provoke are not used for pipelines.
Related: a pipeline kicks off a run (informal), runs on every push, or you re-run a failed pipeline. CI = Continuous Integration; CD = Continuous Delivery/Deployment.
2 / 5
A pipeline is divided into ordered phases: build, then test, then deploy. What is each of these phases called, and what do you do with one?
Each ordered phase of a pipeline is a stage, and you run a stage. Within a stage you have jobs, and within a job, steps. Collocations: the build stage, the test stage, the deploy stage, a stage fails, run the next stage, stages run in sequence, jobs run in parallel.
A step is the smallest unit, not the phase — and you don’t “press” it.
block and chunk are not CI/CD terms.
Hierarchy to remember: pipeline → stages → jobs → steps.
3 / 5
A tested build artifact passed staging checks and should now move toward production. Which collocation describes advancing the artifact?
You promote an artifact (or a build / release candidate) from one environment to the next without rebuilding it. The same binary is promoted up the chain. Collocations: promote to staging, promote to production, an artifact repository, build once, deploy everywhere, a release candidate (RC).
upgrade refers to versions, not environment movement.
forward applies to email/ports; escalate applies to incidents and support tickets.
Key principle: you build the artifact once and promote the identical artifact through environments, which avoids “works on my machine” drift between builds.
4 / 5
Before code can reach production, it must pass an automated quality check that can block the release. Which verb describes putting that blocking check in the pipeline?
You gate a release — place a quality gate (or approval gate) that must be passed before the pipeline proceeds. Collocations: a quality gate, an approval gate, gate on test coverage, the release is gated behind sign-off, a manual gate.
block describes the effect when a gate fails, but you don’t “block a release” as the setup verb.
fence and wall are not used.
Common gates: passing tests, security scans, code-coverage thresholds, and a human approval. A failing gate blocks the pipeline until it’s addressed.
5 / 5
A teammate explains good pipeline design. Which sentence uses the natural CI/CD collocations correctly?
The natural phrases are: fail fast (stop the pipeline at the first failure instead of wasting time on later steps); retry a job (re-run a flaky job automatically); and pipeline as code (the pipeline defined in a versioned file like .github/workflows or .gitlab-ci.yml).
Option A borrows monitoring verbs (scrape, silence) and a node verb (drain).
Options C and D pair verbs with the wrong nouns entirely.
Master set: trigger a pipeline, run a stage, promote an artifact, gate a release, fail fast, retry a job, pipeline as code.