What is Continuous Testing?
In a DevOps-aligned development ecosystem, all code by individual developers must be put through a gamut of automated tests before merging into the main branch. It basically verifies and cleans code from its smallest units so that minimal bugs appear in the later stages.
Continuous Testing in DevOps is an integral part of the CI/CD pipeline, which is responsible for accelerating the development of high-quality software in short timelines.
How to implement a Continuous Testing strategy
- Market research is your friend: DevOps ultimately intends to mitigate business risk by rolling out good software at a fast pace. This requires optimization on every level of the pipeline.
- To start off, take the time to study which software workflows are most important to the target audience. Plan tests to cover these workflows foremost. Get a clear sense of the complexities of the current business landscape so that testers can get their priorities right. Once the hierarchy of customer and business preferences has been established, QAs can design automated tests that cover certain features that customers or users will primarily focus on. Basically, map the requirements to software components and create tests to alleviate risk.
Read More: How to fit QA into a DevOps setup
- Adopt Shift Left Testing: Continuous Testing shouldn’t just come in at the end of integrating code to the repository. Instead, Shift Left Testing should be implemented across the development process so that code is verified from the creation of its first unit at the individual level.
Shift Left Testing literally pushes testing to the “left,” i.e., to earlier stages in the pipeline. The Shift Left approach intends to identify and resolve bugs as early as possible in the development process. This improves software quality and reduces time spent in resolving issues (which usually magnify as development progress) later in the pipeline.
In practical terms, this translates to more tests being run by developers themselves before they push their code unit to version control. There are a number of tests every developer should run to contribute to the success of Shift Left Testing and push better products.
- Pick the right tools: All tests have to be run on real browsers and devices. Emulators and simulators simply do not offer the real user conditions that software must run within, making the results of any tests run on them inaccurate. Consider testing websites and apps on a real device cloud, preferably one that offers the latest devices, browsers, and OS versions.
Find a cloud Selenium grid for automated testing, which can be accelerated by parallel testing. The cloud should also provide integrations with popular CI/CD tools. Additionally in-built debugging tools let testers identify and resolve bugs immediately.
By running tests on a real device cloud, Continuous Testing can be conducted to ensure that they are getting accurate results every time. Comprehensive and error-free testing, starting at dev-level, prevents bugs from showing up (usually magnified) at later stages, which reduces the time and effort required to handle them.
