Bamboo

Bamboo is a CI/CD solution developed by Atlassian that automates the entire software delivery lifecycle, from compilation to production deployment. Natively integrated with Jira and Bitbucket, Bamboo provides a centralized platform for orchestrating build and release pipelines. It stands out through its intuitive interface and ability to manage complex multi-branch and multi-environment workflows.

Fundamentals

• Commercial CI/CD server integrated into the Atlassian ecosystem (Jira, Bitbucket, Confluence)
• Architecture based on configurable build plans, stages, jobs, and tasks
• Native support for distributed build agents enabling parallel pipeline execution
• Automatic dependency management between builds and multi-environment deployments

Benefits

• Seamless integration with Jira for automatic tracing of tickets linked to builds and deployments
• Comprehensive graphical interface allowing pipeline configuration without requiring code
• Sophisticated permission management by project, plan, and deployment environment
• Integrated Git branch support with automatic detection and derived plan creation
• Deployment capabilities with environment promotion and manual approvals
• Detailed reporting with complete release traceability and quality metrics

Practical Example

Here's a Bamboo plan configuration using Bamboo Specs (configuration as code in Java) to define a build and deployment pipeline:

@BambooSpec
public class PlanSpec {
    public Plan plan() {
        final Plan plan = new Plan(
            new Project()
                .key("PROJ")
                .name("My Project"),
            "Build and Deploy",
            "BUILD"
        )
        .stages(
            new Stage("Build Stage")
                .jobs(new Job("Compilation", "COMP")
                    .tasks(
                        new VcsCheckoutTask()
                            .description("Code checkout"),
                        new MavenTask()
                            .goal("clean install")
                            .jdk("JDK 17")
                            .executableLabel("Maven 3.9"),
                        new TestParserTask(TestParserTaskProperties.TestType.JUNIT)
                            .resultDirectories("**/target/surefire-reports/*.xml")
                    )
                    .artifacts(
                        new Artifact()
                            .name("Application JAR")
                            .location("target")
                            .copyPattern("*.jar")
                            .shared(true)
                    )
                ),
            new Stage("Test Stage")
                .jobs(new Job("Integration Tests", "IT")
                    .tasks(
                        new ScriptTask()
                            .inlineBody("./run-integration-tests.sh")
                    )
                )
        )
        .planRepositories(
            new BitbucketServerRepository()
                .name("My Repo")
                .projectKey("PROJ")
                .repositorySlug("my-repo")
                .branch("main")
        )
        .triggers(
            new BitbucketServerTrigger()
        )
        .planBranchManagement(
            new PlanBranchManagement()
                .createForPullRequest()
                .delete(new BranchCleanup())
                .notificationForCommitters()
        );
        
        return plan;
    }
    
    public PlanPermissions planPermission() {
        return new PlanPermissions(new PlanIdentifier("PROJ", "BUILD"))
            .permissions(new Permissions()
                .userPermissions("admin", PermissionType.ADMIN)
                .groupPermissions("developers", PermissionType.BUILD, PermissionType.VIEW)
            );
    }
}

Implementation

1. Install Bamboo Server on dedicated infrastructure or use Bamboo Cloud (SaaS version)
2. Configure build agents (local or remote) according to parallelization needs
3. Connect source repositories (Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab) with appropriate credentials
4. Create build plans by defining stages, jobs, and tasks via interface or Bamboo Specs
5. Configure deployments with target environments (DEV, QA, STAGING, PROD)
6. Define permissions and approval workflows for sensitive deployments
7. Integrate with Jira for automatic issue traceability in releases
8. Configure notifications (email, Slack, webhooks) for pipeline events
9. Optimize performance with dependency caching and shared artifacts

Related Tools

• Jira - Ticket tracking and automatic release traceability
• Bitbucket - Source code management with native integration
• Jenkins - Open-source CI/CD automation alternative
• GitLab CI - Competing integrated DevOps platform
• Docker - Build environment containerization
• Kubernetes - Orchestration for cloud-native deployments
• SonarQube - Code quality analysis integrable into pipelines
• Artifactory - Centralized build artifact management

Bamboo represents a mature CI/CD solution particularly suited for organizations using the Atlassian ecosystem. Its native integration with Jira and Bitbucket provides complete traceability from code to deployments, significantly reducing time-to-production while maintaining rigorous release control. For teams seeking a supported commercial solution with a reduced learning curve, Bamboo represents a strategic investment in DevOps automation.