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Continuous testing in DevOps and agile development
In older software development models, such as the waterfall model, developers were divided into separate teams focused on specific tasks. This led to a “hands-off” approach, where one team completed their tasks and handed the software off to another group. The emphasis was on quality, with each team having time to focus on their task without worrying about other aspects of the project. As the demand for faster development grew, this older model proved problematic. A newer development model was developed to respond to the demand for increased development speed. Today, most organizations have adopted a DevOps approach – Agile, which leverages a collaborative and shared responsibility environment. This shift away from older practices has allowed teams to adopt automated testing and continuous activities as well as continuous (continuous) testing.
Continuous testing in an agile environment
In the past, testing was done by passing software from one team to another. The development phase was completed and then testing began. Continuous software testing, or continuous testing in DevOps (Agile), is an approach to software testing in which applications are tested at each stage of the software development life cycle(SDLC). It aims to improve software quality and development efficiency in the continuous delivery process. Read more about software development project management – Waterfall vs. Agile in our previous article. In continuous testing, automated tests are performed as part of the software delivery process to get immediate feedback on the execution results and business risks associated with a software release candidate.
Why does the idea of continuous testing exist?
Continuous testing is a best practice usually associated with DevOps or agile methodology. The idea is that smaller and more regular software development life cycles (SDLC) are beneficial because they provide feedback throughout the software delivery process. Continuous testing is an essential aspect of this process because it helps ensure quality. However, implementing continuous testing can be challenging because it requires rapid feedback and a high degree of test automation. This can be difficult to achieve with a fixed number of in-house testers.
Continuous testing – basic elements of testing
Test automation
Manual testing, although thorough, is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Automation, on the other hand, frees up testers’ time and allows them to focus on resolving bugs discovered during testing. However, it is important to realize that not all aspects should be automated. Exploratory testing remains essential in creatively identifying new test scenarios that can later be automated.
Continuous Integration
Continuous integration (CI) is a key process in software development where developers often merge their code into a common repository (code repository), sometimes multiple times a day. This approach allows software to be built automatically and offers rapid feedback on its quality. In addition, automation and testability are fundamental to CI. Continuous integration (CI) is a different process from continuous testing. The primary goal is to consistently and iteratively build the configuration. This allows developers to automatically build changes based on each code review, run test suites for each build, and maintain a consistent test environment. If a build fails, CI stops it from progressing to the next phases. Teams are then notified, allowing them to quickly fix the problem, often within minutes. This process makes software development more predictable and reliable. It speeds up the development of new features and the rapid removal of bugs before they affect users.
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery (CD) is a method in which code modifications are automatically set up for release to the production environment. As an important part of current application development, CD extends the principles of continuous integration (CI) by deploying code changes to test environments after the build phase. Proper implementation of CD ensures that developers continuously have a product ready for deployment to production that has undergone extensive continuous testing. CD allows developers to extend their automated testing beyond unit tests in test-driven development. The scope of testing in a CD typically includes:
- user interface (UI) testing,
- load testing to assess performance under load,
- integration testing of combined components,
- Application Programming Interface (API) reliability testing,
- regression tests to check for new bugs in existing features.
Read the full article on Continuous integration, delivery, CI CD pipeline.
Continuous testing benefits
Continuous testing offers several key benefits that are essential in modern software development methodologies such as DevOps and Agile. These benefits include: Increased speed: Continuous testing is in line with the fast pace of DevOps and Agile, which facilitates faster software delivery. This acceleration can improve business processes, including faster go-to-market (GTM) strategies. Increased code quality: Continuous testing by detecting bugs early in the development cycle significantly improves overall code quality and reduces the likelihood of bugs. Cost-effectiveness: With a higher standard of code quality and fewer bugs making it into production, continuous testing seeks to offset upfront costs over time. Improved security: Continuous testing creates a robust framework that protects applications from unforeseen changes and security threats during and after deployment. Better team communication: The level of collaboration required for effective continuous testing not only helps identify bugs more efficiently, but also fosters greater cohesion between teams when it comes to broader goals such as user experience and business objectives. Quality assurance standards: continuous testing sets high standards for the quality assurance team and ensures that initial investments in aspects such as test automation deliver the expected benefits.
Challenges in implementing continuous testing
Despite its many benefits, continuous testing presents many challenges for software development teams: integration with DevOps: Teams often lack the tools and training needed to effectively implement continuous testing within agile and DevOps frameworks. Culture shock: Adopting continuous testing can require a significant cultural change for development and testing teams, especially if they are accustomed to traditional processes. Updating testing strategies: Relying solely on traditional testing methods and poorly defined test data management can hinder the effectiveness of continuous testing. Regular code integration: developers who do not integrate their code frequently (ideally several times a day) risk creating problems such as duplicate code and incompatible code, leading to bugs. Test environment management: Ensuring test environments are compatible with the code repository is key to seamlessly testing the latest code. Production environment alignment: It is essential to align production environments with test environments to ensure that all aspects of the software have been thoroughly tested.
Continuous test methods
Continuous testing includes a range of tests to ensure the reliability, security and usability of the application. These tests include:
Shift-Left testing: By prioritizing software testing early in the software development lifecycle (SDLC), companies can help reduce or prevent significant debugging issues in the future. Shifting-left is a software testing paradigm that refers to the practice of testing earlier in the process.
Shift-Right Testing: Shift-right is a software development methodology in which testing, quality control, and performance evaluation of software is performed by developers who are closer to the code. Shift-right emphasizes testing at the end of the SDLC to improve user experience, overall performance, fault tolerance, and functionality. This ensures that applications running in production have been tested and that the same high level of quality is maintained.
Smoke testing: Smoke testing is a process used to determine if a deployed build of software is stable. It performs initial, cursory checks (manual or automated) to discover bugs in the software that can still be quickly and efficiently fixed. Smoke testing is a confirmation for the QA team to proceed with further testing of the software.
Unit testing – : Unit testing is a software development process that ensures that each part of the application works as expected. By isolating and verifying individual functions, methods, procedures, and objects, unit testing allows developers to find and fix bugs early in the development process. Integration and message testing: Integration and message testing ensures that all software modules are error-free when working together. Virtualizing missing dependencies allows teams to test how well collective processes and end-to-end scenarios work. Composite code is used to test whether they perform as expected when compiled and executed at runtime.
– Performance testing: Continuous testing includes performance tests such as load testing to ensure that the application can handle the expected user load and perform optimally. This helps to identify bottlenecks and scalability issues early on.
– Functional testing: Functional testing verifies that the software is ready to provide services to customers. For example, supply chain software should be able to alert trucks to come to factories when inventory is available for shipment.
Regression testing: Continuous testing continuously performs regression testing to ensure that new code changes do not introduce new bugs or break existing functionality.
Security testing – : Continuous testing includes security testing, such as vulnerability scanning and penetration testing, to identify and remove security flaws and vulnerabilities before they can be exploited in production.
Compatibility testingOngoing testing verifies that the software works properly on different platforms, browsers and devices. This is crucial for applications that have a diverse user base.
Continuous testing tools
Although there are many tools available for continuous testing, very few of them are worthwhile. Selenium: Selenium is an open source tool that is primarily used for web browser automation, supports multiple languages, and boasts a large community. In addition, Selenium supports a wide range of popular operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux) and browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari), making it ideal for testing in a variety of environments.
Jenkins: Jenkins is an open-source automation server that simplifies various elements of software development, including testing, deploying changes, creating and supporting continuous integration and delivery. Once you’ve set up a Jenkins server, you’ll be able to run a series of automated tests and builds, ensuring that only stable (and tested) code makes it into production.
Appium: Appium is an open-source framework for automating the testing of mobile web applications. It allows you to create tests across browsers for both desktop and mobile devices. Many cloud providers now offer Appium-based testing services. Appium is a tool to develop, upload, execute and review test results directly in the cloud. Appium not only allows you to automate tests on physical devices as well as on simulators or emulators, but it also allows you to do so without recompiling the application.
Eggplant: Eggplant is a continuous testing tool that provides a unique approach to testing: an image-based solution. Instead of presenting test scripts, Eggplant interacts with the application under test (AUT), which simulates the user’s view. Eggplant provides a test lab that provides continuous access to continuous testing and deployment. It integrates with other CI/CD tools such as Jenkins and Bamboo. This integration allows Eggplant users to perform complex testing including unit, functional and performance testing. JUnit/NUnit/TestNG: Frameworks designed for scripting and executing tests in programming languages such as Java (JUnit and TestNG) and .NET (NUnit). Cucumber: Cucumber is a tool that facilitates behavior driven development(BDD) and allows you to perform feature documentation in a business language.
Tips for effective continuous testing
Continuous testing is an effective strategy because it encourages early and frequent testing. Here are some best practices to get the most out of continuous testing:
- Commitment to providing the best quality
Success in continuous testing depends on a collective commitment to delivering the highest quality. Collaboration between all teams, including development and testing, is essential. Even non-technical teams, such as stakeholders and product owners, should align their work habits and mindsets to foster a culture of continuous testing.
- Test at every stage of the development cycle
Testing at each stage of the software development cycle allows early detection of bugs, minimising costs compared to fixing these bugs in production. Make testing an essential step in every process to ensure that the code performs as designed, even with new updates.
- More automation testing
Although continuous testing can still be achieved by manual testing, automation increases the speed and fault coverage at which testing can work. Automating as many activities in the development lifecycle as possible will help you achieve faster release times. Keep in mind that if you’re transitioning from a manual testing process, setting up automation will take time.
- Integration of tools
Continuous testing is not just about automation. It’s about using the right tools to make testing more accessible, faster, more comprehensive and more efficient.
- Continuous testing metrics
Quantifiable metrics let you know how well your testing is going. Continuous testing provides immediate results to see if the software is performing as expected. Comprehensive data helps measure progress, quality of deliverables, and return on investment in business value.
- Save time with headless test execution
Headless execution is a method of running automated tests that do not use any browser UI or GUI. This process reduces the number of unnecessary cache overflows, cookies, or resources that are used to get the results that really matter: whether the application runs as expected.
- Incorporating performance testing into the delivery cycle
Performance testing is beneficial because it checks the speed, responsiveness and stability of the application. It is a process that observes how the system runs and finds solutions to overcome any problems found. As such, performance testing should be an integral part of ongoing testing.
Conclusion
Continuous testing has become essential for businesses to remain competitive in the modern era. In short, DevOps continuous testing has shaped the software development industry. Every software development company has adopted the testing model in order to create high-quality products that satisfy users on time and with fewer risks or bugs. Continuous testing is here for the long haul and for a developer using agile or DevOps methodology, continuous testing is a must. While there are challenges that continuous testing brings, the benefits far outweigh them.
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