We live in the generation of technology-savvy millennials and gen-zs, who have ever-changing preferences. The modern, tech-driven crowd who spend most of their time on the web and mobile have no tolerance for any kind of technical glitch or performance slowdown. Hence, it is important to implement a thorough testing process to ensure the software is performing flawlessly.
The changing customer expectations have led the companies to release innovative software products in the market. The development of these products is backed by advanced software development approaches that also ensure the quality of the product is top-notch. One of the developmental approaches that companies are following today is investing more in setting up DevOps environment. DevOps approach helps to address and overcome the challenges associated with software quality. Hence, working towards a unified goal of creating advanced software of higher quality.
DevOps is a multidisciplinary approach that combines software development and IT operation, and also interconnects all the other aspects of the development workflow. Here, the testing process is introduced earlier in the software development lifecycle alongside the development process to ensure the bugs are identified earlier and fixed before it can create any discrepancy in the further stages in an amplified way. The introduction on testing in the early stages highlights a shift-left approach, in which the testing is performed on a certain code and moves to the next set of the code after the first one is complete.
DevOps methodology is performed in smaller segments handled by individual teams such as development, workflow, architecture, and testing to name a few. Further, it involves the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) process and seamless workflows integration, which increases the quality issues across the process. Introducing advanced testing methods such as codeless test automation, AI-powered testing, etc., will help solve the quality issues across the DevOps cycle.
Role of Test Automation in DevOps
As DevOps works on continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous testing, the quality parameter depends on both development and testing teams. The testing team works closely with the development team and identifies the errors/bugs earlier and send them to the developer to fix them, Hence, there is a remarkable reduction in the occurrence of errors across the process.
QA plays an integral part in the DevOps cycle, and kind of misalignment of the QA can give inefficient results. In this CI/CD pipeline, any error appearing in the code integration can lead to a major deviation from the actual result. Such errors can be prevented by test automation in a shift-left method.
The Changing Role of Testers
Quality will never go out of fashion; only the software with higher quality will sustain in the market and the others will vanish in no time. With the growing emphasize on quality, the role of testers is also changing. Testers are no longer a mere resource who check the software’s functional and non-functional aspects at the end of software development, but they have become a critical part of the whole development and deployment cycle. The testers today work by analyzing the product from the end-user perspective and ensuring it will leave the users completely happy and satisfied.
With the increasing significance of testers in modern DevOps practices, the role of tester has evolved as SET otherwise known as Software Engineer in Test. SETs are the engineers who analyze the quality issues across the process and build solutions with user-centric approach.
Conclusion
DevOps is the modern approach to build better products that drive better business outcomes. To ensure the process is efficiently working, it is important to build a good testing strategy for the DevOps pipeline. Incorporating continuous testing will streamline the process, improve quality, save time, speed up deployment and delivery.
The agility and robustness of the DevOps methodology make it one of the most preferred methods today. It has completely changed the software development approach and redefined the role of QA. Testing has moved from being just a support team to being a critical part of the whole process. Already, testing has witnessed a change from manual to automated approach, which has further gone scriptless/codeless to remove the hassle of writing the scripts/codes and improve the quality. Future technology like AI and ML have already made their presence in testing to further improve the quality of the software. The future will see many more new testing trends to create products of higher quality.