Integrating continuous testing for digital success
With ‘digital’ now a key part of every aspect of business activity, the ability to deliver innovation quickly is a matter of survival. In a highly competitive market with growing customer experience expectations, the timely release of high-quality digital products and services is no longer a bonus, but fundamental to customer acquisition and retention. The smallest delay can be the opportunity a competitor needs to gain market share and become the next disruptor.
This makes it of great strategic importance to enable software teams to deliver flawless digital experiences at speed and scale. To achieve this, organizations need feedback to determine whether the latest development will function as intended, break core functionality, or worse, fail in a real-world environment. Software testing, once seen as a barrier to speed and innovation, has now become a crucial part of development activities.
This represents a huge shift in perspective from the classic, waterfall approach to software development, which often left testing until the end. The move to DevOps and Agile methodologies means that testing is essential for accelerating the delivery of innovative applications without introducing unacceptable business risks. But Agile and DevOps initiatives are also pushing traditional testing methods to their breaking point. Automation and testing throughout the entire development lifecycle are new must-haves.
Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Tricentis.
Facing the challenges of continuous delivery
Organizations publish much more often, even several times per hour. Testers are expected to test each user story as soon as it is implemented, even if that functionality interacts with other functionality evolving in parallel. Tests are also expected to alert the team when changes unintentionally impact legacy functionality that was implemented, tested, and validated in previous weeks, months, or years.
As organizations move toward continuous delivery with automated delivery pipelines, go/no-go decisions will ultimately depend on test results. Test automation is required, but not sufficient. Even with the most extensive automation, there is not enough time to test everything. As organizations adopt modern architectures and delivery methods, even teams with clear success with test automation will face challenges.
For example, realistic tests cannot be created or executed quickly enough or frequently enough. Teams are overwhelmed by a seemingly endless stream of false positives and incomplete tests, not to mention all the test maintenance required to address them. And finally, they cannot tell company executives with certainty whether a release candidate is suitable for release.
It’s impossible to test every possible route through a modern enterprise application every time an organization prepares for a new release. However, if the testing approach is rethought, it is possible to achieve a thorough business risk assessment with far less testing than most companies do today.
Bringing continuous testing into play
This is where continuous testing comes into play: providing the right feedback to the right stakeholder at the right time. For decades, testing was traditionally postponed until the end of the cycle. But at that point it was too late. There was little the team could do to address tester feedback other than delaying the release.
Continuous testing focuses on accelerating innovation by providing actionable feedback when it is possible to act on it. This helps development teams identify and resolve issues as efficiently as possible. It accelerates delivery by supporting business leaders in determining when it is reasonably safe to release. This is achieved by mastering test automation and going beyond it. It requires aligning testing with business risk, ensuring that testing effectively assesses the end-user experience, and providing the immediate quality feedback needed at different stages of the delivery pipeline.
Therefore, organizations must implement a structured testing approach for new functionality. Development and testing teams need to be able to know in which environments new code has been deployed, when to test new pieces of software, what kind of coverage different tests provide, and what additional tests are needed. But test case portfolios typically suffer from the same problem: a large number of tests with very little coverage of the application.
This results in duplicate test cases and more maintenance to cover the ever-expanding set of tests – an impractical and cost-intensive process. Applying risk-based test optimization can reduce unnecessary testing while dramatically improving risk coverage. It is also possible to see which business-critical functionality has succeeded or failed, allowing organizations to make faster, more informed business decisions about releases. This results in maximum coverage of business functionality with the highest impact, with the least effort. At its core, continuous testing is about evaluating the impact of change, using risk-based criteria to prioritize testing and evaluating business risks when determining ship date.
Therefore, the approach must also be driven by change, not only within technology, but also in people and processes. Organizations should consider what they can do from all perspectives to ease the transition from their current state to a continuous testing process that achieves the organization’s goals for quality, speed, and efficiency.
Continuous testing allows teams to uncover key issues early in each cycle, reducing time to release by more than half than traditionally possible, as well as dramatically reducing in-process production errors. Even better, testing costs can often be tangibly saved and measured – a significant ROI given the current economic climate.
A strategic imperative for digital success
The bottom line is that testing is now a strategic imperative for digital success. Continuous testing allows you to test smarter and quickly gain insight into what matters most to the business. It moves testing from a bottleneck to a trusted coach who helps push boundaries and stay ahead of the competition. In addition to a better product, it is possible to discover areas of development where incredible productivity gains and financial savings can be made. Without this, you might conclude that your competitors have gained the upper hand.
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