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What are the Best Practices for DevOps Testing Strategy?

09/10/2024

What are the Best Practices for DevOps Testing Strategy?

 

There is an ever growing demand for developing and delivering quality software products in less amount of time; To meet the market demands in less time, software development communities across the globe have come up with a software development strategy called DevOps

 

What is DevOps

 

DevOps stands for Development and Operations. This software strategy allows an allround partnering between the various teams involved in the development and delivery of a product. To brief, DevOps involves all the stakeholders of a software project starting from developers, product managers, quality assurance team, operations, system administrators, security and support team. Implementing DevOps means you are pulling a plug to siloed teams and calling for a collaboration of teams involved in the software development life cycle(SDLC). However, to be able to get the full benefit of DevOps, testing has to be included in the continuous delivery chain.

 

Testing in DevOps

 

When testing is included in DevOps it simply means the testing will take place in tandem with development of the product. This fosters for a faster feedback cycle which would enable the teams involved to stay in the know-about of how their tasks would impact the other delivery cycles. The positive outcome of testing is that product quality is checked throughout the DevOps. 

 

 

Importance of Automated Testing in DevOps Environment

 

If you have a dedicated DevOps team, it would be wise to go with automated testing rather than manual testing. Here are a few  reasons.

 

 

  • Continuously testing the code and fixing code is time consuming if testing is not automated.
  • In a continuous software delivery chain, the Quality Analysis(QA) teams may trail if the testing is manual.
  • Inconsistent test practices are known to weaken and reduce the quality of the software that is being built.
  • Long, mundane and time consuming feedback cycles can affect the coding drastically.
  • Integrating automated testing into the workflow will ensure effective streamlining of the processes across Continuous Integration(CI) and Continuous Deployment(CD).

 

The Best Practices for DevOps Testing Strategy

 

The aim of DevOps projects is to automate as many manual processes and to make all the teams accountable for the delivery of the final product. An advantage of DevOps models is that there is continuous testing right from the commencement of the project and even after applications are in production and there is shared ownership of the end product. A DevOps testing strategy is said to be successful when you build, test and release software faster and frequently. To come up with an optimal DevOps testing strategy a detailed assessment of the software is required. 

 

 

  • Measure Key Performance Indicators(KPIs)

 

To gauge the maturity and quality of DevOps, you need to measure the KPIs continuously. This helps to identify defects by phase, stage, functionality, trace flaky test trend, and defects that escaped to production.

 

  • Scale test automation

 

Not only web testing but also mobile testing strategies need to be put in place to build a successful DevOps testing strategy. DIY using Selenium Grid in-house, containerized computing and cloud are the three ways to scale web testing, while Crowdsourcing, Cloud testing labs and DIY are the ways to scale mobile testing. You also have the  testing options for web and mobile across all browsers by using either Open Source Frameworks or to do codeless.

 

  • Automate as many tests as possible

 

DevOPs testing strategy is successful only if all the functional and non-functional tests, Key  Performance Indicator (KPI) and code coverage are updated via Continuous Integration(CI). When CI is paired with automation, the teams will find it easy to test every new code that is iterated and make necessary changes without any time lag.

 

  • Incorporate a stable test automation suite

 

A stable test automation environment is required to ensure the continuous testing adds value to the test. When there is a change in the product code, the testing also changes. For this to happen seamlessly, the test automation suites should be reviewed, audited, refactored and maintained every now and then.

 

  • Use a robust reporting and analysing platform

 

Test report is generated after each testing activity. The developers would be able to quickly analyse, find the root cause of the failure, and take the required action if the reports are detailed.

 

  • Take advantage of Headless Browsers

 

Use Headless Browsers as a part of your DevOps testing strategy for testing web apps. This developer friendly tool allows the developers to deliver a stable build to test. Headless Browsers such as Google Puppeteer and Selenium Grid are free. Google Chrome as well as Firefox support Headless Browser automation testing.

 

  • Involve the full team

 

For a DevOps Testing strategy to succeed, involve the entire team  including business testers, software developers and so on in the test automation for each pull request and code change.

 

Published:09/10/2024

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