The Software development cycle of today means to be more accurate, faster, and reliable. This means that, through continuous testing, it should be capable of solving problems that may happen during the whole process. Users expect high-quality, error-free products, and businesses want to deliver software as quickly as possible.
Over the last decade, the relevance of testing has grown in procedures to ensure that the software is performing as intended and, as a result, does not includes bugs. There are many approaches to testing that can be used depending on various factors. However, as experience has shown, the more frequently you test your product, the less time it takes to release and the less money it takes to fix the mistakes.
The best way to enhance this in the SDLC is to implement continuous testing. It implies running test automation whenever the code is changed. Continuous testing is part of the CI/CD pipeline and is performed throughout the product’s lifecycle. It’s quite different from traditional testing, where software is passed from one team to another during the development and QA stages.
The continuous testing cycle goes from development to testing to deployment, alongside DevOps reduces the time of receiving feedback from the development team on problems and fixing them, it is also more effective with repetitive tasks.
Continuous Testing + DevOps
The DevOps process is a combined teamwork between software development and IT operations to streamline the SDLC and make continuous delivery possible, these two teams work together so that they can perform as one team, and engineers are engaged in every stage of the product lifecycle and possess multidisciplinary skill sets.
Getting feedback at each stage of the project, such as project design, coding, testing, deployment, and maintenance, can result in inefficient resource use, long integration cycles, and product update delays. This is where continuous testing help by allowing each member of the team to receive feedback in a short time by automatizing manual testing and reducing the possibility of human mistakes.
In every stage of the SDLC, predefined QA scripts are running to validate new code. It does not require any specific person to perform manual tests. It allows for immediate source code validation and feedback to teams. Typically, the test begins with integration testing and progresses to system testing, regression testing, and user acceptance testing.
If a test fails, the devs can fix that bug before it could damage the work of the other teams at any stage, if the test runs successfully, the software automatically goes to the next cycle stage, usually continuous delivery, thus ensuring a sustainable delivery model.
Types Of Testing
There are various types of continuous testing to ensure your product’s flawless performance on various levels. They are as follows:
- Individual methods, functions, components, and modules are tested using unit tests. These low-level tests are simple to automate and run quickly via a continuous integration server.
- Integration tests check the compatibility of your software’s units, modules, or components. Several developers typically code different software modules. This test aids in the detection of defects in those modules while they are being integrated.
- API tests ensure API dependability, functionality, performance, and security. APIs enable communication between two different software systems, and API testing ensures that the interaction occurs as expected. It is the layer that sits between the database and the user interface. This test focuses on the software architecture organization logic instead of the product’s interface or how it feels.
- The process of testing the entire integrated software to ensure that it meets the requirements is known as system testing. It is a collection of various tests designed to ensure that the computer-based system, which is made up of software, functions properly. System testing is used to examine end-to-end system specifications.
Benefits of Continuous Testing in DevOps
One of the main characteristics of the code is that it breaks sooner or later. Continuous Testing ensures that error-free code is integrated into the software from the very beginning of its development. It reduces development costs and time because fixing bugs in the late stages is always more complex and expensive.
With the help of automated testing, continuous testing ensures all the systems work consistently. Continuous testing also improves communication between the developer and tester teams. Rapid feedback on errors helps development teams evolve their work, as finding a bug at the right time can help them avoid bottlenecks in future work. Test automation tools ensure reporting and simplify the development process. The team is still on the same page when it comes to errors, failed tests, and those that were successful.
