TestOps is changing the testing ecosystem with a need for rapid releases by having better processes, tools, and enhanced technology across SDLC. DevOps is a successful collaboration between the development and operations team, enabling the market time of software to be reduced by more than 60%. With advanced DevOps practices, software releases became more frequent and it brought new challenges for the Quality assurance and Testing team. This has coined the need for a new discipline TestOps (Testing + Operations).
Before we move to a detailed discussion on TestOps we can have the basics referred here.
TestOps is ideal only for massive complex systems that need frequent quality releases into the market. TestOps will bring a change in complex & scalable software development projects and ensure that new releases and overall software functionality are thoroughly tested before they are live in production. At some times, even considerable amounts of testing are done in production environments with dual shift approaches.
TestOps – It’s all Dual Shift now!
Shift left is what we know on moving towards early in the software life cycle, ensuring testers review and validate requirements, greater unit testing, and API testing, however, there is now a need for shift right. Shift-right is doing more testing in the release candidate builds and post-release builds to mimic users and capture feedback with techniques like A/B testing, Canary Testing, and Dogfooding.
Dual Shift is Shift left + Shift right, which entails continuous testing in lines of Continuous integration and continuous deployment. The constant validation ensures that the code is bug-free and always deployed frequently with a manageable size to test performance and security.
A tester’s skill set is also changing with TestOps adoption, and they should understand how to integrate their framework with tools such as Docker, Browserstack and Jenkins, etc., to get the most out of their tests with the level of testing at different stages and different environments. The key goal for TestOps is to work in such a way that your tests should be as robust as possible with the lowest execution time
TestOps – All it gives is visibility!
Visibility into what’s tested, what’s not tested, and defects will enable us to make data-driven decisions as tools are enabled to provide real-time data, which helps us to predict both leading and lagging indicators throughout the software development and deployment cycles and helps to achieve meaningful in-sprint automation with greater quality which means to customers.
Tools, processes, and data across TestPipeline in an agile environment with appropriate thinking on testing will enable ConnectedTesting, which is all about TestOps.TestOps focuses on maximizing ROI and resource utilization early in the pipeline, which helps in release readiness evaluation and helps make the release decision fully confident.
Things that we need to focus on to ensure the right quality even with frequent releases for TestOps to work
- Let’s not have your tests die – Over the period of time, test cases die which they are not relevant and turn obsolete, so identify and clean. Yes, Housekeeping is necessary.
- Impact Based Testing – Test what is impacted with changes done. A tester should be aware of what to test for that build.
- Tie your Data and environments closely – Let’s have test data and test environments managed in a proper systematic approach to enable rapid testing.
- Don’t get into anti Patterns – Do not follow the Ice Cream model
- Automate all possible – Ensure to have the suitable test automation coverage and have them executed for release and ensure scripts are re-engineered to adapt to changes ensuring SRE teams find a balance between releasing new features and making sure that they are reliable users.
- Fail Fast – We need to aim at failing fast so we can leverage to inspect and adapt with a quick turnaround time.
- Focus on nonfunctional aspects like security and performance and ensure there is reliability
- Right Tools – Tools enable us to deliver faster, so the kind of tools we choose for automation matters. We need to perform deep feasibility, cost-benefit, and ROI analysis and choose the right tools. Consumer feedback is aimed to be integrated well in time, aiming for greater customer satisfaction and experiences.
Set Up Your TestOps Framework
Testing has changed over the past few years, including DevOps implementation for testers. An organization can significantly benefit from TestOps. West Agile Labs advocates a TestOps approach, enhancing software quality and consumer satisfaction. Incorporating it into the company’s system will improve its performance to a great extent.
We fulfill your ever-growing testing needs by delivering beyond automation. Our expert TestOps engineers enable you to make test automation simple, scalable, and robust to ensure software quality across the CI/CD pipeline at every stage and maximize delivery speed.
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