It’s a trap - Jenkins as self-service UI

Jenkins, a popular continuous integration tool, is not ideally suited for self-service UI due to its lack of state management, flat user interface, and potential compliance and security issues. While Jenkins can automate tasks through scripts and jobs, these solutions often lead to complexity, errors, and inefficient use of resources as engineering teams grow. The article advocates for the use of a developer portal or a software/resource catalog, which provides a unified, self-service view of architecture and resources, incorporating guardrails for security and compliance. This approach offers a stateful, rich UI experience, allowing developers to manage resources effectively while freeing DevOps from constant firefighting. A developer portal can integrate with Jenkins for backend operations, thus decoupling the UI and backend, enabling a better developer experience, and aligning with organizational standards and policies.