Jenkins has been a staple in software automation for over a decade due largely to its feature-rich tooling and adaptability. While many impressive alternatives have entered the space, Jenkins remains one of the vanguards. Despite its success, Jenkins can have a significant learning curve, and jumping into the vast world of Jenkins plugins and features can quickly become overwhelming. 

In this article, we will break down that complexity by first understanding the fundamentals and concepts that underpin Jenkins. With that foundation, we will learn how to create a simple pipeline in Jenkins to build and test an application. Lastly, we will look at how to advance this simple example into a more complex project and explore some alternatives to Jenkins.