Why DevOps Underscores The Importance Of Software Testing

Software testing or quality assurance encounters a plethora of drastic technical changes as business firms look forward to incremental and iterative development. Software testers are not the only owners of software quality anymore; Agile, DevOps, and continuous testing are known to present at a wide array of opportunities. However, it comes at the cost of the routine of developers and testers. Now the question arises how the roles of these developers and testers change? You also need to figure out how much of Quality assurance work can be taken by software developers as a business firm decides to change its software culture.

Jeff Payne is recognized to be the CEO of Coveros which is a software company, based in Fairfax, Va. According to Payne, business firms require mentoring, the way into different philosophy changes instead of dictating them. It also motivates a wide array of experts to come out of the comfort zones with an eye to earn more versatility. In the software development niche, those changes are known to revolve around the importance of QA services more frequently. It also includes how the changes are introduced in the application life cycle.

According to Payne, the continuous testing refers to the procedure of testing across the complete life cyle in the right place and at the right time with an eye to improving the software quality. However, he warned that not all the business organizations should include the software developers in the testing process. There is a wide array of reasons for which it is not going to work. Payne has researched the trend for running certain tests in the production process with actual end users.

What is DevOps

DevOps is recognized to be the combination of operations and development. It is regarded as a software development technique for the integration of a plethora of software development functions, ranging from development to operations in the same cycle. It includes a high coordination level within the different stakeholders in the process of software development.

An ideal cycle of DevOps is known to begin from the Dev writing code and include the deployment and development of binaries in the Quality Assurance environment, execution of various test cases, and the deployment into the production in a singular smooth integration flow. This approach is known to have a higher influence on the automation of deployment, build, and testing. Usage of automation testing tools and continous integration tools has turned out to be a norm in the cycle of DevOps.

Reasons to opt for DevOps

Though there are certain differences between DevOps and Agile testing, those who are working with Agile are sure to find working with DevOps familiar and easy to work it. Though agile principles have been applied in the development and iterations of Quality assurance successfully, it is known to be a completely different story on the operations side. DevOps plays a vital role in rectifying this gap. DevOps is associated with Continuous Development in place of continuous integration where the code was committed and written to version control. In addition to this, the code will be deployed, built, installed and tested in the production environment which can be used by the potential audience.

This technique is useful to each and every person, present in the whole chain as the processes and environments are standardizes. Each action of the chain is said to be automated. It also provides freedom to the stakeholders for putting the efforts on coding and designing a high quality of software.

Changed role of software testing in DevOps

Quality assurance is known to get a build which is deployed in the certain designated environment. After this, quality assurance will accomplish the Functional and Regression testing. The build will be sitting with quality assurance for few days prior to the signing off Quality assurance on the build. Such kind of steps is known to introduce certain changes in DevOps.

Quality assurance changes for DevOps

Quality assurance is essential for alignment of the efforts in the specific DevOps cycle. They require ensuring that each and every test case has been automated and achieve almost a hundred percent code coverage. They also require ensuring that the environments are standardized. The deployment on the boxes of software testing is automated. All the pre-testing tasks, post-testing tasks and cleanups are aligned and automated with the Continuous Integration cycle.

DevOps need a higher level of coordination between different functions of the deliverable chain. It also indicates that the boundaries between different roles of contributors present in the chain turn to be porous. DevOps also provide encouragement to everyone for contributing to the chain. Hence, among different things, a devOps helps in configuring the deployments. The deployment engineers are known to add different test cases to the Quality Assurance repository. The Quality assurance or rest engineers are capable of configuring the automation test cases in the DevOps chain.

DevOps and Test Automation

For achieving high agility and speed, it is a prerequisite to automate a plethora of testing processes as well as configure them for running in an automated manner as the deployment is accomplished in the Quality Assurance environment. Continuous integration tools and unique automation testing tools are beneficial for achieving the integration. It also requires the development of Automation testing framework via which you can script latest test cases in no time.

In the DevOps testing strategy, the test cases which need to be executed for a specific build should be identified. The execution of the tests should be lean. The DevOps and the Quality assurance should be sitting together and identify various affected areas owing to a specific build and execute certain test cases. It is also a prerequisite to configure unique coverage tools and specialized code analysis for ensuring that you are capable of achieving hundred percent code coverage.

You require mastering different automation as well as continuous integration tools so that the automation efforts can add value to the chain and are lean enough for adapting to the changes in no time. DevOps is recognized to be a consistent improvement cycle which is modeled by software development from time to time.