Getting started with continuous testing in DevOps.
With the development and operations team working together, the question is where the testing team fits in DevOps. Although it is not being involved in the definition or conversation, testing is the most important aspect in the transition to DevOps.
The testing team is more aware of the flow of information from development to production. They are responsible for the process of moving the application from development environments, testing and delivering them into production. They understand the infrastructure, its working and what requires to be done to get them deployed. Hence, DevOps advocates on engaging testing early and often.
One of the main reasons for the emergence of DevOps is to overcome the communication gap and poor collaboration resulting from a psychological divide between the development, operations and the testing teams. Practicing continuous testing is the first step in a DevOps journey. Continuous Testing(CT) sets into motion, a mechanism of continuous feedback, that drives the software delivery life cycle forward. If the feedback requires to stop, then the involved processes are halted immediately and corrective measures are taken.
Establishing an environment for CT involves the following steps:
- Establish a single authentic source: This can be done by shifting the automation test scripts to an enterprise version control tool. The automated code base should be stored in a version control repository.
- Enable a centralized execution and reporting process by integrating the automation suite with the deployment tool.
- Enable a process of faster feedback by classifying the automation suite in multiple type of tests. All these tests will be run as a part of the build deployment process. In case any of them fail, the deployment process is halted and corrective measures are taken. These tests are of the following types:
- Health check
- Smoke Test
- Full Regression
- Intelligent Regression
Automated testing is more efficient than manual testing. But it faces the following challenges
- Test built on commercial tools are limited by license constraints. These test face scalability challenges and slow down over time.
- Different tools are required for automating different artifacts of the application.
- Regression tests require building long running tests.
Testing teams play an important role in overcoming these challenges. They orchestrate an infrastructure for continuous testing and create a loop for early feedback with the development and operations. By implementing continuous testing, build deployments an be automated which further helps to achieve a full cycle of continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment. Introducing intelligence to the automated tests and migrating them to a more open source tool further enhances the effectiveness of DevOps. An intelligent test automation framework can turn test scenarios on and off based on the changes made in the application.
Conclusion
Once the testing team in involved, they get embedded into the Development and Operations. This prepares an environment of experimentation for continuous quality testing. This finally leads to a combined focus on the development process with continuous testing for continuous delivery.