02 ยท Pipeline Architecture 03 / 12
Failure Modes

What Breaks Your Pipeline

Flaky tests hide real regressions A single flaky test masks three genuine failures on average. Quarantine fast, fix faster.
Caching the wrong layers costs hours Dependencies change daily. Your cache key should too โ€” or every build starts from zero.
Parallel jobs without dependencies deadlock Map your workflow graph first. A missing requires key turns speed into gridlock.
Silent rollbacks erode trust in every deploy Each rollback should trigger an incident thread. If the team can't explain it, users won't trust it.