Why You Need Continuous Testing in DevOps

Many DevOps initiatives start with the adoption of continuous integration (CI) practices, where code is constantly built-in to make certain everything works together. Developers start the CI process by checking code into a shared repository often times a day. Each and every check-in is verified by an automated build process and some fast-running tests, allowing teams to find errors and conflicts as soon as possible. Regression tests are run at least each evening to ensure any changes made during the day did not crack something else.

After CI is performed, a continuous delivery process is adopted, where the application is further tested and, once it passes all the required tests, it's available to release into production. The upside of continuous deployment is it provides new functionality to users within minutes, as well as instant feedback to the team that allows rapid respond to customer needs. Effective testing during your continuous deployment process is critical because without it, there is a large chance of continually releasing push chair software into production.

Avoid Testing Practices Sluggish You Down

Continuous testing, which is often called shift-left testing, is an approach to software and system testing in which testing is performed before in the program lifecycle. Typically the goals are finding defects earlier, increasing software quality, reducing long test cycles, and reducing the opportunity of software defects making their way into production code during deployments. Continuous testing is vitally important if your company is attempting to use DevOps to deploy software frequently into production.

Done right, continuous testing provides fast and continuous insight into the health of the latest build of your application. These details can then be used to determine if the software is ready to progress through the delivery pipeline at any given time. Since testing commences early and is executed continuously, bugs are exposed immediately after they are introduced, which reduces the time and work needed to find and fix them. Consequently, it is possible to improve the speed and frequency where bug-free, high-quality software is delivered, as well as decrease technical debt.

Technological debt refers to the price organizations pay when releasing badly designed computer code. It's a way of calculating the price tag on additional remodel caused by choosing a fairly easy and quick solution now rather than by using a better, less buggy approach that would take longer. Exactly like financial debt, technical debt incurs interest that must be paid, such as increased maintenance, support, or legal costs. By shortening the time it takes to correct buggy software, continuous tests helps pay down your technical debt by keeping these interest costs from accruing.

DevOps is a cultural shift that stimulates collaboration among all teams, including development, quality assurance, operations, and others, such as performance management, release management, and maintenance teams. Consequently, there is no single product that can be considered the definitive DevOps tool. Often, an accumulation of tools from a variety of vendors is employed in the stages of a DevOps process. Continuous the use is often seen as the backbone of a continuous delivery pipeline, which clarifies the popularity of CI tools such as Jenkins and Bamboo to build, test, and deploy programs automatically when requirements change.

Companies using DevOps often ship new software into production hundreds of times every day. These companies are delivering smaller pieces of software, collaborating, and monitoring in production to make a continuous flow of code, from check-in to manufacturing. And they're using ongoing testing technology to place testing activities into every part of their software design, development, and deployment processes.

Let Tech Do the Heavy Lifting

To discharge superior quality code faster, your organization needs to let tech the actual heavy lifting by implementing next-generation tools and procedures that allow you to test early, often, automatically, and continuously.

By performing the right set of tests at the right stage of the shipping and delivery pipeline--without developing a bottleneck--these tools enforce agile principles by providing appropriate feedback at every stage of the procedure. This improved communication does away with duplication of efforts and increases alignment among dev, ops, and testing groups, which will allow you to deliver software on tighter schedules.

But these streamlined schedules are only possible if test automation is seamlessly integrated into your software delivery pipeline and DevOps toolchain. Test automation operates by running a big amount of tests repeatedly to make certain an application doesn't crack whenever new changes are introduced. Manual testers are often still involved in DevOps projects, performing screening while an automation test suite is constantly running--but their role must shift toward a session-based educational testing approach, focused on areas with the most risk or where automation is not effective.

The image below shows an example DevOps pipeline that features continuous testing during check-ins, continuous integration, and constant delivery.

A DevOps pipe that incorporates continuous screening during check-ins, continuous integration, and continuous shipping and delivery

A Continuous Testing DevOps Toolchain

While not an inclusive set of all available DevOps products, here's a directory of tools that together make up an affordable constant testing DevOps tool chain.

Organizing Tools

If you're buying a tool that makes it easy for different teams to collaborate, Jira is an agile project management tool that supports any agile methodology, be it Scrum, kanban, or your own unique flavor. Coming from agile dashboards to reports, you can plan, track, and manage your entire souple software development projects. Jira's wide range of integrations also helps you hook up to almost any other tool you're likely to need.

Dev Tools: Desktop computer or Cloud-based IDEs

Although Eclipse and Visual Studio room are the most popular desktop IDEs, Cloud9, developed by Amazon Web Services, and JSFiddle lead in the cloud.

Version Control Systems (VCS)

There are several web-based hosting services for DevOps version control, including Microsoft's GitHub, Atlassian's Bitbucket, and the open source GitLab service. All work within standard desktop or cloud IDEs to ease the techniques of source code check-in and checkout.