This document provides an introduction to continuous integration (CI), including its objectives, benefits, and how to get started with CI. CI aims to integrate components, software, and infrastructure through short, frequent integration cycles to reduce integration problems and improve productivity. Benefits include anticipating risks early, reducing errors, providing fast feedback, lowering release stress, and enabling collaboration. The document recommends choosing build and scripting tools, using a configuration management system, selecting a CI tool like Jenkins, and setting up a CI "playground" for testing. It provides examples of configuring projects and jobs in Jenkins along with collecting build statistics, reports, and notifications.