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Try for freeEarlier, there was the Waterfall model. Then came Agile methodology. And as the IT world slowly moved toward automation, DevOps became the next big thing. Surely, there must exist some benefits to adopting the latest software development practice. But it is only beneficial when combined with automation. DevOps test automation is a way to develop and test the code quickly and push it to the market without any major errors.
We talk more about DevOps and test automation in this blog.
Table Of Contents
What is DevOps?
DevOps is the combination of software development practices that combines Software Development (Dev) with Information Technology Operations (Ops) intended to speed up the development life cycle of any software application. It is critical to delivering new features and improvements, bug fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with business objectives.
In a nutshell, DevOps practices include Agile planning, Continuous Integration, Testing and Continuous Delivery, and of course monitoring and improving. Let us remember that DevOps is not a process or a technology or even a standard. Many businesses, software companies, and IT professionals refer to DevOps as a culture focusing on rapid delivery through the adoption of agile lean processes. DevOps heavily involves technology, technologies for building systems to be delivered and more importantly, testing automation tools for QA testing purposes.
DevOps Test Automation
DevOps test automation is the practice of automating the testing of builds in the DevOps process.
Test automation is the practice of automating the review and validation of applications under development by the testing team. They write test cases, run the scripts, and raise possible bugs that are still present in the application. This all happens as per QA testing practice.
In CI/CD pipeline, QAs do not wait till the end to test the product quality. Continuous building and testing of the product go on till it is branded as fit for market release. For example, test automation in DevOps empowers businesses to build, test, and ship products faster and more reliably. It further supports streamlining incident responses and improves collaboration and communication across teams and stakeholders.
Where Do QA and Test Automation Fit with DevOps?
DevOps plays a very important role in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), but where exactly does QA fit in the continuous integration of DevOps practice?
The answer to the question is simple. QAs, with their test automation activities, fit in every release. They, the QA tester team, thoroughly check the product and make sure it is well-polished and production worthy. They make sure that quality is ensured throughout the testing and delivery cycle, and each of the testing and development groups is answerable for it.
Continuous integration and continuous delivery practices, and software updates take place almost every week. And it is possible for business operations to encounter problems that can be rooted mainly from being a defect in the product that pretty much affects multiple business users. This is quite a common scenario nowadays for businesses. Therefore, everyone needs a quick fix, especially when the product is failing.
Having a hot fix means it needs to go through testing right before moving to production. This is where the QAs and test team come in. This is where they need to take responsibility and accountability in evaluating and doing some assessments on whether the immediate fix resolves the current issue the production is facing and, most of all, whether the fix does not affect the functionality of any of the existing features within the application. So just as much as the Developers and Product Owners want to get rid of the outage with a quick fix, a Quality Analyst is needed to mitigate future outages to as much an extent as possible.
QA and Test Automation with DevOps
Basically, QA ties together development and operations and enables them to collaborate to have software and applications up and running. Everyone in the organization takes responsibility for quality and stability, and thereby for the success of the business.
Developers think more like a tester and continually checks their own code for potential errors. Conversely, a tester, whose responsibility is to test the application or software using different types of testing tools & methodologies, thinks of workarounds to fix the code. In such a scenario, organizations without a strong and definite QA and testing strategy to “continuously test” in DevOps face troubles in meeting their goals for an accelerated speed of delivery. Get to know some DevOps Automation Tools to Look Out for in 2023 & Beyond.
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What is the Impact of DevOps on QA?
DevOps is roughly an approach, but rather it is a culture and a practice of continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous improvement. Multiple teams are involved and working together to work as a DevOps team. Therefore, it affects not only QAs but also the development team, business operations, production support, etc.
If we are solely talking about QAs, we can formulate the impact of DevOps test automation.
One, DevOps is considered an enabler for businesses to reduce IT budgets. Get to know the importance of devops in business. It improves the efficiency of end-to-end delivery and runs on a lean delivery framework. It also works as a working end-to-end test automation framework.
Nowadays, successful businesses today are design-thinking driven. The majority of them have a strong sense of urgency, aided by innovative software engineering practices. Businesses today need to have a working continuous delivery practice in place. Having one in place pretty much mandates a better outcome of product quality and speedy release. Automaton is the key to success across DevOps processes.
Delivery by co-located, integrated teams using innovative tools prevents collaboration and communication issues.
Manual errors and stove-piped communication issues are completely addressed just by having a good DevOps governance model. The model itself mandates “Fail Fast, Fail Often,” which comes from the “Test First” concept. This means that testing is a continuous process and more extensive in nature. Testing allows cohesiveness between the team of teams and the automation of everything possible. Testing is paving the way for continuous improvement in the test processes being delivered via iterations. Intelligent test automation, better regression, and continuous test augmentation, to name a few, are some benefits of DevOps.
Impact on QA
From a testing standpoint, DevOps addresses some of the key testing challenges. For instance, in a test environment, virtualization, automated deployment, automated build and configuration management, data refresh, and maintenance become seamless. On the other hand, continuous Integration, automation, and verification – test first centric test-driven development, behavior-driven development concepts allow test processes to improve in a DevOps Model.
With all these, it is safe to say that as far as DevOps and Test Automation are concerned, DevOps accelerates the project delivery and life cycle of building an application. On the other hand, it is designed to speed up the testing phase without compromising the quality of the product.
Having the best of both worlds, DevOps knowledge and practices, along with Test Automation, is promising for the success of the business. With the right team roster and an automation tool like Testsigma, you will have your product live in the market in no time!
If you haven’t tried Testsigma yet, then you are missing out on shifting your QA team from manual testing to test automation in a jiffy. Above all, it lets your QA team be a part of the DevOps test automation process.
How Automated Testing Powers DevOps?
You cannot do DevOps if you don’t automate testing. And although automating every step and through might be a long process, starting with the first step is a good idea. We have all the reasons why automated testing in DevOps is the way to go:
- Better collaboration and communication: DevOps with automation build clear and concise communication between all the teams and stakeholders handling that particular project.
- Speed and agility: Improve the overall project timeline and quality to ensure that users get the best and most updated version of the product.
- Scalability: Consistently provide quality builds in the CI/CD pipeline by distributing the development process across multiple teams.
- Security: Take care of all the security and compliance measures by following the automated practices to run, test, and deploy all your builds.
- Reliability: Increase product release reliability with higher test coverage options with automation.
Testsigma: Your Best Yet Move Towards DevOps Test Automation
Now if we start talking about the “perfect” QA tool that fits DevOps culture and practice, there are a few things we need to keep in mind. Factors like the iterative, automated, and incremental nature of DevOps. The QA tool must, at all costs, be flexible enough to handle all the unforeseen changes during testing sessions. More importantly, it should be scalable to the extent of enduring workloads during the continuous development, continuous testing, and continuous deployment phases.
What we should be looking for is a tool that completely adapts tools to how DevOps works. A tool that is an enabler that can empower your testing team for iterative releases. On a special note, the tool should be scalable and reliable to handle the incremental amount of code changes.
Just to summarize all this, what you need is a solution that is designed for Test Automation in DevOps.Sure, there can be a lot of testing solution provider in the market like UFT that uses VBScript as its scripting language, then there are tools in service virtualization for Testing and many more of them that claims to be an “all-in-one testing solution” and choosing just one would be a difficult task.
Well, in that case, sometimes it is best to try it for yourself. You may try Testsigma, an all-in-one Unified Test Automation Software for Web, Mobile apps, and Web Services, and one that works well for DevOps and CD.
Here are a few features Testsigma offers:
- Start with Test Automation Ecosystem, which enables you to access essential elements required for test automation. There is no requirement for a tool and setup.
- Continuous Testing for Agile and DevOps teams that uses a shift-left approach incorporates Continuous Integration and Continuous Development, providing fast feedback to accelerate the delivery of web & mobile apps.
- Super-Fast Test Development Using Simple English lets everyone write automated tests at least five times faster using plain English. No coding skills are required.
- Fully Loaded Test Lab on Cloud to Run Tests which offers over a thousand Operating System/Brower/Version combos and two thousand plus real mobile devices to run a significant amount of tests in minutes.
- Parallel Test Execution Save Time and Cost because of scalable test environments and parallel test executions to run thousands of tests in minutes for faster feedback.
- AI to Reduce Maintenance Efforts and Improve Productivity by saving test maintenance time by 70%. AI also helps affected and potential failures upfront to save execution time and costs.
With all these being said, it is best to say that Testsigma is built for QA teams to automate testing in DevOps. So, what are you waiting for? Don’t be left behind. Sign up now for a free 21 days’ trial!
For more information, visit Testsigma Official Website.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is QA in DevOps?
The role of QA in DevOps is to verify the product’s quality. It is also to ensure that the application aligns with the user requirements and with the business goals.
Is test automation part of DevOps?
Yes, test automation is a part of DevOps that consists of running automated test cases to validate a build’s proper functioning. Test automation comes after build development is complete.
Is DevOps better than automation testing?
Both DevOps and automation testing have their own benefits. While they both can function without one another, it is better to combine them to get the best quality final product for your users.
Suggested Readings
Why DevOps is Important for Modern Businesses
DevOps Configuration Management
