Redefining DevOps Software Testing in a Socially-distanced World

Covid-19 has hit the global economy very hard. With people being forced to quarantine themselves and maintain social distancing, the new normal of working remotely has taken center stage. However, digital companies have quickly adapted to the new development or mode of working and shown the world how things can be kept operational even when everything is closed. In fact, digital technologies have become the enabler in allowing people to work remotely even during such disruptions. Amid calls for maintaining social distancing and following a ‘work from home’ model, enterprises can keep the SDLC up and running. To do so, they may adopt DevOps software testing and focus on embracing a culture of collaboration and learning.

The best part is that DevOps specialists can work remotely by accessing tools from the cloud. They can ensure any Business Continuity Plan to run unhindered. The Covid-19 is unprecedented in the sense that in earlier times, disaster management was about fixing a site or two that had gone down. But now, the situation demanded the entire IT architecture to be shifted to the cloud and every employee to work remotely. The concept of DevOps, an enhanced model of Agile, is underpinned on conducting daily team meetings and collaboration. In such meetings, plans are made, reviews of last work are taken, and any new challenge is acknowledged. The entire meeting is conducted among co-located employees using tools like whiteboards. However, with Covid-19 led social distancing norms being the order of the day, teams offering DevOps testing services are falling back on cloud-based IT automation tools. Before discussing how DevOps can help enterprises in dealing with the crisis borne out of a socially-distanced world, let us know what it is all about.

What is DevOps?

An acronym for Development and Operations, the methodology is an enhancement of the Agile model of software development. It aims at improving communication and collaboration between the two business units by streamlining and automating the SDLC. DevOps combines practices, cultures, tools, and processes to scale the enterprise’s capability to deliver products or services at quick speeds. Here the thrust is on continuous development, testing, integration, and delivery of products after taking feedback from the end-customers. DevOps is all about refining a software product continuously to ensure it remains trendy and addresses the needs of the customers. Also, with security playing a key role in any software product, every process, team, or department within an organization should be accountable in implementing the same by following DevSecOps.

What is DevOps software testing?

It follows the Agile way of software testing where QA works alongside development in pre-arranged sprints. Here, a code is tested and integrated to another module in the development phase itself by using automation. To redefine DevOps quality assurance in a socially-distanced world, there should be a change in approach, especially from the DevOps testing specialists. There are as follows -

# Teamwork: In such times when you are on your own (literally) and do not have the neighbour’s desk to ‘consult,’ you should focus more on documentation. Before going about any job, be clear about the requirement(s) and write clear messages for your peers and superiors to understand. If earlier, little transgressions were overlooked due to quick and better monitoring, now the same can lead to a logjam.

# Continuous Integration: DevOps is all about automating the testing process for obtaining optimum results. While working remotely, a CI pipeline should be in place developed by DevOps engineers, DevOps specialists, or anyone with the knowledge and experience in enabling DevOps test automation. The tester should feed the code in the CI pipeline to run the required tests. The test automation software within the CI pipeline should test if the code conforms to the established protocol. Such a pipeline would give results in quick time, be the code written by you or someone else.

# Continuous Deployment: After the code transitions through the CI pipeline, it is time to merge your code. So, your job seems to be done and deployment remains the job of the Ops team. The latter needs to get the same back into production. So, instead of relegating the job to the Ops team, why not make a seamless process wherein both Development and Operations work in synchrony? So, in addition to building a CI pipeline, one must create a CD pipeline as well. The pipeline will ensure the code fed into the CI pipeline enters production. In doing so, you can automate the process by setting up metrics and take care of bugfixes, future feature development, and more automation, among others.

Conclusion

The pandemic has created an unprecedented situation where the entire software development, testing, and delivery process needs to be executed from remote locations. In such a distributed environment, DevOps can be embraced by enterprises to make the process streamlined, responsive, and resilient.

Fitting QA and Sec in DevOps

Traditional QA is woefully short in tackling the challenges of modern software applications. This is due to the fact that today’s software applications have interfaces with several digital elements and third-party sites to function and deliver the right outcomes. And to ensure that they do so seamlessly, DevOps QA must replace traditional QA.

So, why did DevOps QA slowly assume salience in the new digital scheme of things?

In a traditional software development lifecycle, QA exists as a distinct group along with Dev. It has different job roles, responsibilities, and management. The bottom line, both Dev and QA exist as separate entities catering to different objectives. However, from the operations perspective, both development and QA are considered to be part of the same ecosystem.

With quality, or should we say customer experience, taking precedence over everything else as far as acquiring a competitive edge in the market is concerned, enterprises are adopting DevOps as a methodology. Here, development and operations are combined in a cultural web where ensuring quality is not a one-off thing but a continuous process to be adhered to. So, when development and operations merge, how does QA fare in the scheme of things? DevOps is all about enhancing the quality of software applications throughout the SDLC and beyond. It incorporates test automation, security, and quality engineering while delivering continuous integration and deployment.

Why DevOps?

Enterprises are adopting this model to create a build ecosystem where quality software is developed quickly – on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. Here, the traditional concept of software release gives way to the continuous improvement of products or services. DevOps is the culmination of agile wherein all bottlenecks to delivering a superior quality application are removed. Through DevOps test automation, enterprises can achieve objectives like faster time to market, high-quality applications, instant responsiveness to customer queries or feedback, and preventing the ingress of glitches, among others.

How to incorporate Security into DevOps

As the security of applications becomes a cause of concern due to the rising incidents of cybercrime, customers have become wary of trying out new applications or even using the established ones. Are the concerns of end-customers valid or are they overreacting? The answer to the validity of concerns is a resounding yes. Unfortunately, even when the spectre of cybercrime is on-the-face, many enterprises have not yet woken up to the challenge. There is often a mistaken belief that cybercriminals would only target big and established players, and smaller players can get away without incorporating security into their build pipeline. Since security is such an important part of DevOps, let us understand how to weave awareness about the same in the SDLC.

How to introduce security into DevOps and make it DevSecOps?

The best practices to incorporate security into the DevOps model are as follows:

Create a DevSecOps culture: Every member of an organization should be made aware of the consequences of a security breach, especially on the brand and business. A heightened level of security awareness can help companies in situations where there is pressure to come out with a large number of software applications in lesser time. All-encompassing security culture will prevent developers to take shortcuts and instead insist on making way for DevOps quality assurance. To ensure the incorporation of DevOps QA in the SDLC, the culture for security awareness should be driven from the top. The executives and various stakeholders in the value chain should be made responsible for overseeing the introduction of security into the DevOps model.

Inculcate security awareness: This continues from the above wherein every new hire in the organization should be trained in the basics of security. It could be about writing a secure piece of code or identifying the most common attack vectors. The senior developers and DevOps testing specialists could be tasked with preparing training courses on secure coding protocols or common mistakes. Thus, the senior developers take ownership of these issues, especially when it comes to the daily grind of reviews, builds, and deployments.

Security processes should be compulsory but minimal: People, by and large, dislike lengthy protocols and can be at the end of their tether when the security processes are elaborate. So, it makes sense to lay down short and robust security mechanisms when it comes to dealing with passwords, encryption keys, or ciphers, among others. However, the types of authentication that are required should not be left to guesswork but made mandatory.

Conclusion

As DevOps picks up momentum and becomes the de-facto model for software development, QA and security should be made an integral part of the value chain. The latter two will ensure the effectiveness of the model when it comes to developing quality software applications.