Flaky Tests Were Destroying Our Pipeline (Until We Added Retry Logic)

I recently read an honest account on the Testleaf blog about dealing with flaky tests in CI/CD, and it perfectly captured my own nightmare: watching a test fail five times in a row, then pass perfectly when run locally.
The Flaky Test Crisis
Before implementing retry logic, every test failure triggered panic. Was it a real bug? Network latency? Server hiccup? We'd spend hours investigating only to find the test passed on re-run.
Our CI/CD pipeline had zero tolerance for flakiness. One failure meant:

Slack alarms firing
Manual investigation eating hours
Deployment delays
Developer trust eroding

Why Tests Get Flaky
In our environment, flakiness came from:

API latency: Backend responses delayed slightly
Environment instability: Servers threw transient 500 errors during deployments
Third-party dependencies: Payment gateways or external APIs being slow
Async UI timing: Elements loading unpredictably despite explicit waits

Rarely was it bad test code—usually environmental or timing issues beyond our control.
The Retry Logic Solution
We implemented automatic retries: if a test fails, retry up to 5 times before marking it failed.
The Rules:

Maximum 5 retry attempts (prevents endless loops)
Every retry logged with failure reason and attempt count
Only critical workflow tests eligible (saves pipeline time)
Fully integrated into Azure DevOps

The Results:

Flaky failures dropped 60%
False alarms nearly disappeared
Developers trusted CI/CD results again
QA stopped wasting hours on manual re-runs
Pipeline feedback became meaningful, not noise

Critical Lesson
Retry logic isn't a fix—it's a filter. We still monitored patterns, identified problematic APIs, and worked with Dev to resolve root causes. Retries gave tests a fighting chance under imperfect conditions while surfacing genuine issues.
For Your Growth
Understanding retry strategies separates novice from experienced automation engineers. Whether learning through an automation testing course or an online automation testing course, ensure it covers handling flakiness in real CI/CD environments.
Retry logic transformed our pipeline from unreliable to trustworthy. Small implementation, massive impact.

Inspired by Testleaf's comprehensive guide on retry logic in CI/CD pipelines.