What is Continuous Testing in DevOps

Fixing a software bug after a product is launched can be up to 100 times more expensive than addressing it during the development phase. Continuous Testing is a vital approach in modern software development, where testing is integrated at every stage of the process. This helps identify errors early, reducing both the risk of defects and the costs that come with fixing them later.

This article explores the fundamentals of Continuous Testing and its benefits in DevOps. It will also explain key points to consider while incorporating Continuous Testing in a software testing life cycle.

What is Continuous Testing in DevOps?

Continuous Testing refers to running automated tests every time code changes are made, providing fast feedback as part of the software delivery pipeline. It was introduced to help developers quickly identify, notify, and fix issues. The goal is to test more frequently, starting with individual components and later testing the entire codebase.

Note: Continuous Testing is a key part of the Continuous Integration (CI) process within Agile and DevOps pipelines, enabling faster and more efficient software delivery.

How does Continuous Testing play a vital role in DevOps?

Continuous Testing plays a significant role in DevOps:

1. Software Development Evolution: Traditionally, software development followed a rigid process with defined timelines for development and QA phases. Code would be passed between teams, making updates and deployments slow and cumbersome.

2. Agile Transformation:

• The shift to Agile methodologies has made real-time changes and feature updates more convenient.
• The integration of Continuous Testing and CI/CD pipelines accelerates the movement of code through the development, testing, and deployment stages.

3. Continuous Testing in DevOps:

• In Agile DevOps, Continuous Testing ensures code quality by running automated unit tests continuously throughout the development cycle.
• For example, a QA engineer checks automated unit tests on Jenkins servers. If tests pass, the build moves to the QA servers for further testing (e.g., load and functional testing). If tests fail, the build is rejected, and the developer is notified.

4. Risk Mitigation:

• Continuous Testing allows for the early detection of critical bugs, minimizing the risk of costly fixes later in the process.
• By catching issues early, teams save time and resources in the later stages of development.

5. Test Automation: Continuous Testing encourages the automation of tests at each stage of the development cycle, ensuring software quality and code validity.

6. Readiness for Deployment: Continuous Testing helps teams evaluate the readiness of the software for deployment, ensuring it’s production-ready by the time it passes through the delivery pipeline.

How does Continuous Testing in DevOps differ from Traditional Software Testing?

Some of the ways in which continuous testing in DevOps is very different from traditional software testing:

Benefits of Continuous Testing in DevOps

Listed below are some key benefits of incorporating Continuous Testing:

• Early discovery of critical bugs
• Seamless collaboration among developers, QA and Operations team
• Helps to assess the quality of software developed at each stage
• Can be seamlessly incorporated into DevOps
• Helps drive faster test results which leads to improved code quality
• Repeated testing ensures minimal failure rate for new releases
• Faster time to market with a viable product and continuous feedback mechanism

Challenges in Implementing Continuous Testing

Continuous testing presents the following challenges for software development teams:

1. Integration with DevOps: Many teams struggle to implement continuous testing within Agile and DevOps frameworks due to a lack of the right tools or training.
2. Cultural Shift: Adopting continuous testing often requires a significant change in mindset, particularly for teams used to traditional testing methods.
3. Updating Testing Strategies: Relying on old testing approaches or poorly managed test data can reduce the effectiveness of continuous testing.
4. Frequent Code Integration: Developers who don’t integrate their code frequently, ideally multiple times a day, risk creating issues like duplicated efforts or incompatible code, leading to defects.
5. Test Environment Management: It’s essential to ensure that the test environments are aligned with the latest code in the repository to enable smooth testing.
6. Production Environment Alignment: For thorough testing, the production environment must closely match the test environment to ensure all software aspects are adequately validated.

What to consider before adopting Continuous Testing?

There are a few points which developers and QAs need to be mindful of when initiating Continuous Testing into the development process.

• Embracing Continuous Testing involves starting testing efforts from the initial stages of development and at every single branch in the pipeline.
• Teams need to ensure that they are testing on high performing staging environments that are exact replicas of the production server. Configuring such staging environments will require considerable resources, bandwidth, and infrastructural investments. Doing this ensures that teams are going the extra mile to replicate the performance of the application in a production environment.
• Developers and QAs must choose the right set of tools and automation frameworks for each layer of the test automation pyramid – Unit testing, API testing, and UI testing.
  There are multiple test automation frameworks available that allow concurrent test execution. Selenium and Cypress are two such frameworks that are widely used for automating web-app testing. On the other side, Jenkins and Travis are among the most popularly used CI/CD tools
• QAs must also evaluate the test results carefully and look out for false negatives or false positives. This is because either of them can lead to disruptions in the production stage.
• No matter what, there’s always a probability that the recently released build will misbehave or crash. In such cases, teams must have a proper roll-back plan. Developers must ensure that before pushing any code in the production stage, all critical data is backed up.

Best Practices for Continuous Testing in DevOps

Here are some best practices to help make continuous testing effective:

• Automate Extensively: Automate repetitive tests to catch issues early and save time.
• Integrate with CI/CD: Embed testing into the CI/CD pipeline to get rapid feedback throughout development.
• Maintain Realistic Test Environments: Use environments that mimic production for more reliable test results.
• Use Relevant Test Data: Ensure test data is realistic and fresh to reflect real user scenarios.
• Shift-Left Testing: Start testing early in development to catch issues sooner and reduce late-stage fixes.
• Optimize Test Performance: Regularly review and improve test scripts for speed and relevance.
• Mix Testing Levels: Use unit, integration, and functional tests to cover different parts of the application.
• Foster Team Collaboration: Encourage developers and testers to work closely, sharing responsibility for quality.
• Use Cloud-Based Tools: Cloud tools allow parallel testing on multiple platforms for faster feedback.
• Analyze Test Results Regularly: Review test data to improve testing effectiveness and identify recurring issues.

Talk to an Expert

Why use BrowserStack for Continuous Testing in DevOps?

BrowserStack Automate offers Continuous Testing in DevOps. Some of the major advantages of using BrowserStack Automate with CI tools for test automation include:

• Seamless Integrations: Compatible with popular CI tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and Azure DevOps, BrowserStack makes it easy to include real-device testing in CI/CD workflows.
• Real User Environment: Run tests on actual browsers and devices, which improves accuracy over emulators and helps catch environment-specific bugs.
• Parallel Testing: Run multiple tests at once, reducing testing time and accelerating releases.
• Self-Healing Tests: AI-powered self-healing minimizes test flakiness by adapting to minor UI changes, which boosts reliability.
• Scalability: BrowserStack’s cloud-based infrastructure allows teams to scale up or down as needed, providing flexibility and reducing the infrastructure burden on development teams.

These benefits make BrowserStack a valuable addition for teams looking to optimize test automation and enable Continuous Testing in CI/CD pipelines, delivering high-quality software faster. For more on these integrations, visit BrowserStack’s Automate Integrations.

Conclusion

Continuous Testing is an unavoidable part of DevOps. Every organization operates differently and have their own ways of executing Agile practices. An efficient way to integrate Continuous Testing is to have an all in one environment that provides teams with the flexibility to choose the desired programming languages, frameworks, and tools for testing.

BrowserStack allows developers and QAs to choose from a range of programming languages, platforms, devices, tools, and automation frameworks required for comprehensive manual and automated testing. Check out the complete list of Integrations that will benefit developers and QAs with their activities.

Try BrowserStack Now

To deliver a reliable software application, having an efficient test strategy is absolutely imperative. Continuous Testing plays a vital role in the CI/CD pipeline as it helps to accelerate test results and facilitate faster delivery of robust, user-friendly software.