The 4 CI/CD Abstraction Models: How They Work and When to Use Them

As internal developer platforms evolve, one of the most pivotal decisions platform teams face is where to draw the line between platform and application ownership in continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Abstraction is necessary for scale, but how much is too much?

Get it wrong, and you either hand off complexity to application teams or smother them with inflexible workflows. In both cases, the platform fails to meet high return on investment expectations, either due to underutilization or avoidance. Get it right, and the platform becomes a force multiplier, enabling software delivery to move faster and safer across the org.

In this post, we’ll walk through four distinct CI/CD abstraction options and help you decide when each one makes sense.

Abstraction 1: Infrastructure Support

Maximum flexibility, highest application developer effort

This abstraction gives application teams direct access to cloud primitives with minimal additional abstraction. For example, the centralised infrastructure team may provide application teams with a public cloud account or a Kubernetes namespace to work within. The platform team might provide templates or guidance, such as a set of Terraform modules, for additional resources that application teams can create. But the creation, orchestration, promotion, and CI/CD flows are fully owned by each application team.

Pros

• Maximum flexibility and control for teams

• Suitable for expert developers and diverse application needs

• Easy to evolve independently per team

Cons

• High cognitive load and duplication of effort for application teams

• Risk of inconsistent environments and compliance gaps

• Difficult to maintain and audit at scale

Best for

Startups, R&D orgs, or highly specialised teams where speed and autonomy outweigh uniformity. It is less suited for regulated or large-scale environments.

Abstraction 2: Environment Management

Managed dependencies, customised experience

Here, the platform provides managed environments that are predefined and reproducible instances with built-in wiring for infrastructure, secrets, and dependencies. Application teams still own their CI/CD logic, including building the application and promotion flows between environments, but the platform owns what it means to have a “staging” or “production” environment.

Pros

• Reduces operational complexity for app teams with managed infrastructure

• Enables custom promotion workflows and delivery flexibility

• Environments are kept consistent, scalable, and auditable

Cons

• Still requires teams to manage build/deploy logic

• The platform must support edge cases through configuration, not customisation

• Coordination is needed when the environment's needs diverge

Best for

Mid- to large-scale organisations that are balancing speed and safety. Great for shared dependencies, compliance-heavy workflows, or where there are diverse application types and needs, either due to the age of the company, number of acquisitions, or diversity of the company's product lines.

Abstraction 3: Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Fast onboarding, standard apps only

In a PaaS abstraction, the platform provides an opinionated build-and-deploy pipeline. Teams push code, and the platform handles the rest. The platform builds the app into a deployable artefact, deploys to standard environments, which include running included tests, and connects infrastructure behind the scenes. CloudFoundry, Heroku, Vercel, and Netlify are canonical examples.

Pros

• Extremely fast onboarding and velocity for standard apps

• Centralised control of builds improves security and efficiency

• Developers focus solely on code

Cons

• Only works for “vanilla” apps that fit the platform’s mould (often twelve-factor compliant)

• Edge cases often result in shadow IT or significant platform investment

• Requires investment to manage support of application, as production ownership lines are blurred

Best for

Greenfield projects, internal tools, or orgs with a homogeneous tech stack and minimal compliance friction.

Abstraction 4: Full Application Orchestration

Max leverage, minimal flexibility

This is the most centralised abstraction, where the platform manages everything after a code push. That means building, testing, promoting, managing the environment, and even obtaining release approval. Application teams push code and monitor provided dashboards; the rest is orchestrated for them.

Pros

• Central platform team can enforce consistency, security, and efficiency

• Reduces delivery friction and effort per application team

• Useful for high-scale operations with uniform requirements

Cons

• Developers lose flexibility and visibility

• The platform must support all delivery edge cases and business processes

• Teams can become disconnected from their software in production

Best for

Environments where centralised control is essential, or where application teams lack experience in software delivery lifecycles.

Tradeoffs and Decision Drivers

Choosing the right abstraction level is not about finding a universal best practice: it’s about contextual fit. Here are the core dimensions that drive the tradeoffs between abstraction:

Factor	Infra Support	Env Mgmt	PaaS	Full Orchestration
Flexibility	High	Medium	Low	Very Low
Cognitive Load on Devs	High	Medium	Low	Very Low
Platform Effort to Maintain	Low	Medium	High	Very High
Onboarding Speed	Slow	Medium	Fast	Very Fast
Edge Case Support	High	Medium	Low	Very Low

Use Case-Based Selection

Your choice of CI/CD abstraction typically depends on your use case:

• You need speed with minimal complexity: Start with PaaS and aim to standardise your apps, if possible, to match this abstraction.

• You need safety and scale with some flexibility: Environment management strikes the perfect balance, being structured enough to reduce risk while also being flexible enough for teams to self-serve.

• You have expert teams with specialised needs: Offer infrastructure support but invest in internal docs, templates, and a community of practice to mitigate security maintenance risks.

• You must enforce strict delivery controls across all teams. Full application orchestration provides consistency, but it requires well-staffed platform teams and engaged teams.

CI/CD Abstraction Models: Final Thoughts

The four CI/CD abstraction options aren’t mutually exclusive. Most modern organisations blend them. 

Choosing to build infrastructure support offerings that can be used by skilled teams or for legacy systems that can't leverage the higher levels of abstraction. They then build on top of these infrastructure-supported offerings to create managed environments or PaaS offerings for higher-leverage application types. The real goal isn’t to standardise everything, it’s to intentionally compose maintainable abstractions that serve each team’s needs while aligning with platform goals.

By understanding these abstraction options and their tradeoffs, platform teams can shift from reactive ticket resolution to strategic enablement. The abstractions you offer today define how fast—and how safely—your organisation can deliver tomorrow.