Interview Questions/Troubleshooting Scenarios/Flaky Integration Tests Blocking Releases
IntermediateScenario
10 min

Flaky Integration Tests Blocking Releases

CI/CDTestingReliability
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Interview Question

CI pipelines are blocked by flaky integration tests. How do you triage and stabilize pipelines?

Key Points to Cover
  • Identify flaky tests with historical run data
  • Isolate infrastructure vs code test flakiness
  • Add retries with quarantine for known flaky tests
  • Fix root causes (timeouts, race conditions)
  • Parallelize and optimize test environments
Evaluation Rubric
Identifies flaky tests systematically30% weight
Separates infra vs code issues30% weight
Proposes retries/quarantine and fixes20% weight
Stabilizes pipelines effectively20% weight
Hints
  • 💡Retry storm can hide real failures.
Potential Follow-up Questions
  • How to track flaky tests over time?
  • Should flaky tests block releases?
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