What is Continuous Testing in DevOps
Continuous Testing ensures the product is evaluated early, often, and throughout the entire Continuous Delivery (CD) process. Continuous Testing uses automated tests (i.e., Unit tests, API Tests, UI Tests, and/or DB Tests) to ensure developers receive immediate feedback to mitigate as many risks as possible throughout the software development lifecycle.
It’s evident that every software application is built uniquely, and it needs to be updated regularly to meet end-user requirements. As the development and deployment process was rigid, changing and deploying features required considerable time. This is because projects earlier had definite timelines for development and QA phases, and the codebase was transferred between teams.
However, with the Agile approach becoming mainstream, making changes even in real-time has become more convenient, primarily due to Continuous Testing and the CI/CD pipeline. The code continually moves from Development to Testing to Deployment Stages.
The following are the best practices to reap the best out of continuous Testing –
Adopt More Test Automation and Optimize it
Automating as much as possible in the development lifecycle will help you achieve faster releases.
Keep this in mind. If you shift from a fully manual testing procedure, don’t expect automation to happen overnight. It can take time to set up. But once you do, the time-saving benefits will earn you points with your customers, who won’t have to wait as long for new features. Or even getting your product to market before your competition can.
Multi-layer Tests
For a successful application or product deployment cycle, it is important that all development facets or phases are covered extensively by the QA team and vetted for quality. Hence, testing teams need to leverage a multi-layer strategic approach. Consider having different layers of continuous automated tests – Unit Testing, Integration tests, API Tests, E2E UI Tests, database tests, and performance tests. Unit Tests are the fastest, then comes API Tests and UI tests are the slowest. We need to maintain the balance between these tests to improve the speed of test execution and the quality of Testing.
Leverage the CI Pipeline
Adopting the right tools is the first step to ramping up a CI/CD pipeline. The tool supports various test types required by a continuous delivery cycle, including unit and regression testing.
Tracking Metrics
Use quantifiable metrics to keep track of your success or failure rate during Testing. Continuous Testing offers immediate results to see if the software works as expected. Hard data yield results to measure progress and quality outputs. Tracking how many bugs are found and corrected provides continuous validation for your business value ROI.
Two key metrics you need to be sure to keep track of are: counts of defects and counts of fail/pass test scripts. Tracking the number of defects discovered in your testing process will help you determine if the number increases or decreases. If it increases, strategize ways to change your development process; if it decreases, keep up the great work! Additionally, keeping track of the number of passes/fails test scripts will help you produce a comprehensive testing strategy to improve your application’s functionality.
Leverage Containerization
Containerization is bundling all components of an application – including configuration files, libraries, and dependencies – within its own operating system.
Containerization makes continuous testing easier to process by keeping each application’s service in its own environment. Imagine testing only the specific code you need at one time rather than the entire application.
Also, using containers for your test environments keeps the often difficult-to-maintain environments up-to-date with the latest code changes that would be released to production. Furthermore, if the test suite fails or the data becomes corrupted, the container can be discarded and another one set up with fresh data.
Integrate Automation Tool reporting with Test Management tools
When Automated tests are integrated with Test Management tools such as Jira-Xray/Zephyr, TestRail, PractiTest, Microsoft DevOps, etc., automated tests results can be posted into the test management tools with evidence in case of passed/failed tests. This process improves transparency the Quality Assurance across the stakeholders of the application. This also helps generate many test reports, such as traceability matrices, test execution reports, etc.
Conclusion
Continuous testing is a great way to ensure your product is released to the market at the quality customers expect. You’ll be off to a great start if you incorporate these best practices before implementing continuous testing within your organization. You can also take this free self-assessment to learn where your team is in the continuous testing maturity roadmap and get expert tips to improve your CI/CD.
Discover how QualiTlabs can elevate the quality of your software products. For a personalized free consultation, inquiries, or expert assistance, please get in touch with us at sales@qualitlabs.com. Let us be your trusted partner in achieving exceptional quality and success.