Why Binary CI/CD Quality Gates Fail at Scale (and...

Introduction Most CI/CD pipelines rely on binary quality gates: tests pass or fail, coverage meets a threshold or it doesn’t, vulnerabilities are present or not. That model works well for small systems. It starts to break down as systems grow larger, more distributed, and more regulated. In real-world enterprise environments, not all failures carry the same risk — yet CI pipelines often treat them as if they do. The Reality in Large and Regulated Systems In domains like insurance, healthcare, or