Self-Service - CI/CD Glossary Definition

Self-service means a developer can get what they need (a pipeline, an environment, a deploy) instantly, without a ticket or a human gatekeeper.

Self-service in platform engineering means developers can provision resources or run actions (create a repo, spin up an environment, trigger a deploy) on demand without waiting on another team.

Removing manual handoffs is a core goal of platform engineering because queued requests are a major source of delivery latency.

In CI

Self-service CI lets a team enable a new pipeline, add a runner label, or trigger a redeploy through a template or portal action rather than a request to an ops queue.

Related guides