How to Find and Fix a Flaky Test in a CI Pipeline

A CI test that fails intermittently can slow releases and teach developers to ignore the signal. The cause may be shared state, timing assumptions, external dependencies, parallel execution, or test data that is not isolated.

Collect a reproducible record

Track test name, commit, runner, start time, duration, retries, and relevant logs for both passing and failing runs. Compare concurrency and environment variables. Check whether the test depends on wall-clock time, network services, or execution order.

• Make test data unique and clean up state after each run.
• Mock unstable external services when the behavior under test permits.
• Replace fixed sleeps with explicit readiness conditions.
• If quarantine is necessary, assign an owner and expiry date.

Confirm the correction over repeated runs and keep the test's original intent. Informatix Systems lists DevOps and cloud engineering services. Contact Informatix Systems to improve CI reliability.