What constitutes the process of Software Quality Assurance?

  

 To ensure the quality of the software product, software quality assurance is conducted comprising activities like planning, setting up the metrics, formal technical reviews, setting up multiple testing strategies, change control, report and documentation.

In a rapidly growing digital landscape built on complex software applications, system software suites, state-of-the-art hardware systems, networks, and internet technologies, the customers have become very demanding. The demand is for quality products with attributes such as speed, security, cost-effectiveness, usability, and convenience. Software quality assurance is the process to evaluate these attributes by testing software applications based on a set of parameters. It majorly tests whether the software application under development fulfils all criteria that the initial plan entailed. A QA software testing process validates the functioning of all processes, modules, methods, work items, and activities as per pre-defined metrics. It also checks if the software application complies with the industry defined standards such as ISO 9000, CMMI, SOX, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS, among others.
The process of software quality assurance is comprehensive and entails the end-to-end lifecycle of the software development and delivery process. There may be situations when the software conforms to the explicit requirements but does not meet the implicit requirements. These situations are emblematic of suspected software quality and require the hiring of software quality assurance services for mitigation.

Objectives of quality assurance and testing

QA testing services follow the below-mentioned objectives:

• Ensure the software fully complies with the protocols and meets all quality parameters before delivery

• Customers should get a superior experience while browsing the software and using its various features and functionalities

• The software should be well-structured and understandable by any developer or tester

In a competitive business landscape where the requirement is for delivering quality products faster to the market, the software quality assurance process should be continuous. This entails the adoption of the agile way of software development wherein cross-functional teams work in tandem within a QA enabling culture. The other aspects of pursuing software quality assurance methods are implementing test automation and provisioning the requisite test environment.

What activities belong to the Software Quality Assurance process?

The software quality assurance testing process entails the following activities:

Planning: At the outset, the testing team along with other stakeholders prepares a test plan outlining the test activities to be performed. The activities typically include the identification of evaluations, the performance of audits and reviews, identifying the applicable standards, tracking and documenting the errors, and feedback offered to the development team.

Setting up the metrics: The quality assurance and testing team identifies and sets up suitable metrics against which the quality of the application is evaluated. This helps in better monitoring and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the testing process as per its overall objective. The examples may include measuring the capacity, quality level, performance, design features, dimension, amount, or some other attributes of the software application.

Formal Technical Reviews (FTR): This process evaluates the design and quality of the prototype. Here, the technical team is consulted about the software’s quality requirements to detect glitches early on in the SDLC. The FTR helps to reduce rework in the later phases and works as a quality control mechanism. The FTR verifies if the software application under test meets specific quality requirements as per predefined standards.

Setting up a multi-testing strategy: This ensures the software quality assurance testing process is not dependent on a single testing approach. With a multiple-testing strategy, the software application is tested from various angles to achieve better quality. These include black-box and white-box testing, system testing, unit testing, regression testing, and acceptance testing, among others.

Change control: Here, a mix of manual and automated testing procedures is used to create a mechanism for change control. Through the validation of change control, the nature of change and its impact are evaluated to maintain software quality during the phases of development and maintenance. The change control activity determines the impact of change brought about by fixing a defect(s) and verifies whether the change is in accordance with the objectives of the project.

Reports and documentation: The entire process of software quality assurance testing is documented and shared with the stakeholders for further analysis. The documented reports include test results, review reports, audit results, and change results, among others.

Conclusion

Software quality assurance is the lynchpin to achieve the success of the software product based on its adoption by the customers. It consists of several processes, activities, techniques, and standards, which determine if the software product aligns with the business objectives and performs to its desired level.  

 

Article Source:
https://www.softwaretestingmaterial.com/

What is the role of Cloud Testing in IT modernization?

 

 

Cloud testing has become an inevitable component in the digital transformation process of business enterprises. It delivers a slew of benefits such as on-demand provisioning of test resources, no setting up of costly on-premise test environments, reducing CapEx, and accelerating the time to market, among others. 

In the software development ecosystem, testing has often been considered as an adjunct process, which organizations willy-nilly need to put up with to meet their business objectives. Further, the testing process executed through a dedicated in-house infrastructure may be used sporadically. However, given the growing complexities of business applications, organizations may find it difficult to set up and maintain on-premise testing facilities mimicking real-time environment. And even with the requisite infrastructure, organizations may still find it difficult to achieve scalability and operational flexibility to meet ROI.

This is where cloud-based testing can offer benefits like lower investment costs, easy accessibility to test resources, enhanced collaboration, on-demand flexibility, better efficiency, and reduced time to market. However, cloud testing may have challenges in the form of a lack of data security and standards, especially in a public cloud set up. So, stakeholders should explore the advantages of cloud testing services while being aware of the challenges.

Why choose a cloud application testing approach?

In addition to cloud computing, organizations are willing to embrace cloud application testing in view of the below-mentioned advantages.

Testing means new environment: Every new software development project has new testing needs. These necessitate the setting up of new testing environment, which is capital-intensive. Besides, in-house test labs are known to remain idle and underutilized, which make them a costly proposition. However, provisioning similar environments on the cloud when needed and paying for the limited time and resources they are used can save costs.

Testing can allow businesses to run as usual: A cloud application testing approach does not necessarily require the use of sensitive corporate data, which makes it safe. Since such testing has a minimal impact on the running of day-to-day business operations, it can be considered as an effective model of testing.

Addresses the testing complexities: Software applications are becoming complex, distributed, and dynamic to address the digital transformation initiatives of organizations. To test such applications (web or mobile-based) effectively, they need to be tested on a multiplicity of operating systems, devices, networks, browsers, and hardware configurations.

Besides, testing various functionalities of such applications in real-time would require the involvement of a large number of concurrent users spread across geographies and time zones. And no points for guessing that addressing such challenges by setting up in-house testing environments would entail huge capital expenditures. However, cloud-based test automation can be provisioned on-demand to address the above-mentioned challenges, thereby lowering the CapEx significantly. Importantly, the time, effort, and resources saved can be used for core business pursuits.

Organizations big or small must embrace IT modernization as a tenet to stay competitive. A cloud testing strategy allows them the flexibility to provision/decommission the testing environments based on their demand or the absence of the same. Hence, organizations end up accruing significant cost benefits by NOT investing in the following areas:

• Setting up a test infrastructure
• Provisioning of tool licences
• Configuring and maintaining test environments

Cloud has the ability to transform CapEx into OpEx and reduce costs. However, the quantum of cost benefits would depend on factors such as the type of cloud model (public, private, or hybrid), type of tests, and configuration of the test environment. Another lure to adopt cloud testing, besides cost optimization, is the availability of a standardized test environment. The standardization includes the presence of a library and compliance with service level agreements.

Creating on-premise test environments for a single application can be time-consuming and may delay the software application’s time to market. Whereas on-demand provisioning of cloud-based testing environments can be quick as they already exist in the cloud. With cloud testing, organizations do not need to figure out about finding servers, getting licenses for testing tools, and installing them. Instead, they can easily access virtual labs that are scalable and ready-to-use. These labs come with a host of test tools, operating systems, storage, and middleware to create test environments that mimic the real-world. Here, testers can execute testing with minimal or no writing of test scripts thereby shortening the product life cycle.

Other benefits of adopting cloud application testing

In modernizing the IT infrastructure of an organization, cloud-based testing entails a slew of benefits.

• Pay only for things that are used
• Reduces the product development lifecycle and speeds up deployment
• Standardized systems in use
• Latest functionality on offer
• Encourages collaboration, anytime and anywhere

Conclusion

Traditionally, testing has been given short shrift by most organizations in favor of development. However, the imperatives of creating product differentiation in the market by generating superior customer experiences have allowed organizations to provision on-demand cloud-based testing resources with a host of benefits.

Article Source:

https://devdojo.com/ 

Best practices for Salesforce Integration Testing

 
 

 Enterprises are digitizing in a big way to streamline their operations and deliver the best quality products to their customers. And when customers are the main force behind the success of an enterprise, ignoring their interests or downplaying their queries/issues can be an unmitigated disaster. Salesforce is a powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that helps enterprises to recognize and manage customer interactions throughout the product lifecycle. As a popular CRM tool, Salesforce is highly robust, customizable, configurable, and extensible. Comprising several applications, Salesforce helps businesses to reinforce customer relations and interactions, and client retention thereby leading to their growth.

Any CRM platform like Salesforce has become important in today’s business milieu where enterprises need to manage their relationship with customers once a product is delivered. The platform provides systems, technologies, strategies, and practices to reinforce customer interaction throughout the product lifecycle. Salesforce has myriad applications with which it needs robust integration and interoperability to run various functionalities. This calls for executing Salesforce integration testing covering all modules namely, accounts, campaigns, reports, leads, and contacts, among others.

Why Salesforce testing?

The CRM suite ensures proper management of customer interactions with the organization. It is only by understanding and addressing the concerns of the customers that organizations can ensure customer satisfaction and stay competitive. Salesforce application testing helps to validate the functionalities and their configurations as per the agreed business objectives. Such testing allows for early identification (and fixing) of glitches in the application development process thereupon ensuring the product addresses the needs of the customers.

Best practices for Salesforce integration testing

As mentioned above, Salesforce is the sum-total of applications that execute various functionalities aimed at addressing customer issues and strengthening the interaction. However, these applications should have proper integration among themselves and with the mother software suite (Salesforce) to deliver superior outcomes. Hence, a proper Salesforce testing framework should be established to take care of the integration issues. The best practices to follow while pursuing such testing are mentioned below:

# Collate information: Collate a comprehensive list of all test case scenarios and possible technical exceptions. For each scenario, the expected results and actions to be performed should be documented. Thereafter, test data should be created to validate each scenario.

# Right testing tools: To get the best results, use the right debugging tools offered by the latest browsers combined with the test classes. For example, you may use a powerful object-oriented and case-sensitive proprietary programming language called Apex to execute programmed functions like updates, deletions, custom links, and record insertion, among others.

# Follow naming conventions: Before writing test cases for Salesforce test automation, it is important to name the test methods appropriately. The test methods should comprise the below-mentioned parts:

·         Name of the method – insert/delete/update/undelete

·         Information about the test path – null contact or valid

# Total coverage: Even though the Salesforce directive is to cover about 75% of the code while conducting unit tests, one should aim at covering 100% of the code. Test all cases (positive or negative) as well as data (present or absent). Follow the below-mentioned tips to ensure 100% test coverage.

·         Refresh the code coverage numbers while running Salesforce automated testing

·         Rerun the tests when there has been an update in the business

·         The test coverage depends on the number of code lines. So, if the codes lines are added or deleted, the coverage percentage will be impacted accordingly.

# Test cases with classes and controllers: Developers, in order to make coding portable, organized, readable, and reusable, often create separate classes and controllers for each function. So, even though this enhances the readability of the code, there is not much improvement in its efficiency. Portability can be achieved when the test code is in the original class and there are minimal chances of missing a test class during migration from sandbox to production.

# Agile approach: In this approach, the software application is developed in small incremental builds wherein testers work concurrently and iteratively (using test automation) to evaluate the code.

# Synchronization with current operations: One of the principal features of any distinct Salesforce functional testing is its synchronization with the current operations. So, it is important to verify the test results against reference data signifying quality.

Conclusion

Since Salesforce functionalities add value to the organization, they need to be validated against expected parameters and reference data. Thus, a proper Salesforce integration testing plan should ensure the application build simplifies, streamlines, and enhances the business systems. 

Article Original Source:
https://www.sfdcpoint.com/

 

How Software Testing can be benefited from the use of AI

 

 

Enterprises operating in the digital realm can achieve success if they ensure their software applications are updated as per the latest trends and customer preferences. This forces the IT teams to be faster and agile, and adopt measures to align their work culture to meet the demands of the business. No wonder they are adopting Agile and DevOps methodologies to speed up software development and delivery besides fostering collaboration. Agile and DevOps have quality assurance embedded in them leading to continuous testing of the code build.
 
Continuous testing ensures that any change in code is implemented instantaneously and effectively. It also places iterative QA across the SDLC thereby accelerating the build quality. However, continuous testing in the omnichannel environment can be riddled with issues such as a lack of visibility of requirements across processes, siloed automation, and a high volume of tests, among others. To address these issues and drive quality at speed across the SDLC, it is important to adopt an AI-based testing approach.
 
How can AI facilitate continuous testing?
 
Artificial Intelligence can remove manual intervention and smoothen the process of continuous testing. In AI testing, QA teams can initiate the test cycle to identify and fix bugs based on insights drawn from past events and historical data sets. AI-driven testing ensures that only a robust code is moved across the SDLC thereby foregrounding quality as the centrepiece of software development. Even though the testing activities are automated in continuous testing, the code needs to be signed off manually to move across quality gates based on the test results. This siloed automation can disrupt the flow of code in the SDLC. However, with AI test automation, the code checking at quality gates is done automatically and code progression is managed by analyzing the test results. This makes the workflow fully automated. By triggering QA processes with artificial intelligence, the testing teams can achieve the following:
 
Automation of quality gates: Given that the AI algorithm can determine the course of code progression based on historical data, the testing teams can allow/entrust the AI testing services with facilitating code progression. Conversely, the AI engine can prevent code progression if it finds a high probability of outage or disruption to be caused by the presence of bugs.
 
Identification of root causes: AI-based testing can analyze the patterns and correlations in a build to identify the root causes of defects. Thereafter, the AI engine can orchestrate remedial tests to reduce the margin of errors in the build.
 
Focus on brand assurance: With an AI testing framework, test automation is made all-pervasive and intelligent. This allows the QA teams to glean insights from historical data, business acumen, and customer inputs, thereby shifting the QA focus to brand assurance and competitiveness.
 
Predictive analysis: AI-based testing can analyze the existing customer data to understand how the user behavior and needs will evolve in future. These insights will give the software development and QA teams to come up with suitable features and functionalities to be ahead of the curve.
 
API test evaluation: The performance of a software application depends to a large extent on the quality of interactions between various modules connected with databases and servers, among others. By evaluating the performance of the APIs, the testers can validate if the connection between various modules in the application is stable. They also check if the requests are processed accurately and the customers will get the correct outcome post a specific interaction. Artificial intelligence led testing can analyze the functionality of the APIs and large volumes of data to detect risks and create precise test cases.
 
Scriptless test automation: Even though test automation has revolutionized the QA process, the writing of test scripts to automate various test processes can be a challenge. Besides, the scripts need to be maintained as well for further usage thereby escalating the cost. However, an AI testing framework can create test cases automatically leaving the QA specialists to focus on other areas of software testing. Often developers writing test cases do not have the time to explore additional possibilities for the test cases. Consequently, they may end up writing test cases they are familiar with rather than writing the ones that can generate the least redundant data. AI-driven testing can run a minimal number of tests to understand the kind of impact (positive or negative) a code change can entail. With limited manual intervention, the artificial intelligence led testing can ensure no redundant data and bottlenecks are there in the application.
 
Conclusion
 
Artificial Intelligence can open up new avenues for testing software applications. In a day and age where the speed and quality of applications go hand-in-hand to generate superior user experiences, reduce costs, and improve profitability, AI-based testing has become an enabler for enterprises to stay competitive.

Article Source:
https://medium.com/

What are the benefits of using Software Security Engineering?

 

 

The incorporation of software security engineering in the SDLC accrues a slew of benefits such as the ability to identify and fix security-related vulnerabilities, making everyone in the ecosystem a stakeholder in addressing security-related issues, among others.

The global digital landscape is becoming more distributed, complex, transformative, innovative, and growth-oriented. If this is good news then the converse is also true in the form of rising cyber threats. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the expanding footprint of cybercrime is expected to cause a loss of $6 trillion globally by 2021. And with more number of enterprises looking at embracing or migrating to technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), AI, Big Data, and Cloud, and others, the stakes for securing the IT infrastructure by incorporating security testing in their value chain have become high. Let us delve into some mindboggling figures to understand the enormity of the issue.

• Around 4.1 billion records were breached in the first half of 2019 (Source: Varonis)
• Cybercriminals attack every 39 seconds, 2,244 times a day on an average (Source: Univerity of Maryland)
• 57% of companies faced phishing or social engineering attacks (Source: Ponemon Institute)
  

The above-mentioned real threat scenarios have multiplied the risk for companies with cybercrime arguably becoming the number one challenge facing the global IT industry. However, the good news is that several stricter legislations have been passed across the world to counter this menace. These include HIPAA, SOX, ISO 27001, and GDPR, among others. The increased sophistication of cyber-attacks means the traditional software security measures are not enough. Today, enterprises need software security, which is far more comprehensive, future-focused, and built into the product development lifecycle.

In other words, security testing should be an integral part of the build cycle instead of being an adjunct to the testing process as per the traditional testing model. Any software security testing exercise should offer a 360-degree view of an organization’s security ecosystem. This helps to identify and fix the blind spots or vulnerabilities and anticipate the forthcoming threats – to secure the organization and accelerate its transformation and growth. So, like quality engineering, security engineering needs to be implemented to enhance the capabilities of an organization in fighting cybercrime.

What is security engineering?
It is a process of adding and implementing security controls into the IT infrastructure including the information system to make the former an integral part of the organization’s operational capabilities. In the DevSecOps model of development, security should be integrated into all phases of the SDLC with every department and stakeholder accountable in ensuring the security of the system. Security engineering services involve practices and principles that are incorporated in the design, development, implementation, and execution of technical controls.

Implementing security engineering into the product build cycle
The steps of implementing security engineering services into the SDLC are as follows:

• Develop criteria for monitoring system security followed by a baseline design for the security system. Thereafter, conduct security threat analysis and vulnerability studies.
• Validate the security baseline design, lay down performance indicators for security software and hardware, and fix threats and glitches using modifications in system design and using risk management techniques.
• Design the security system and integrate the same into the SDLC.
• Address any security threats and concerns using risk management techniques.

Why is software security engineering important?
Software security engineering involves security testing services, processes, techniques, and tools to address any security-related issue in the SDLC. It ensures the IT infrastructure is resistant to sudden system failures or any intentional attack. The other benefits are:

• The software secured through software engineering is able to identify, pre-empt, withstand, and recover from malicious attacks.
• Helps to build reliable and glitch-free software which can continue to function in the face of malware attacks, abuse or misuse, and unintentional failures.
• Allows quick, effective, and efficient fix of the attacks directed at the software application and its surrounding ecosystem.
• Offers greater agility and speed for teams dealing with application security testing.
• Ensures early identification of vulnerabilities, which if left unattended could be exploited by hackers to swoop into the system. The built-in security measures can allow these vulnerabilities to be fixed and ensure the transfer of data between modules is made more robust through encryption.
• The principle of ‘secure by design’ is implemented. Thereafter, through automated application and web security testing the security review of code is executed. It empowers developers to leverage secure design patterns while building software modules.
• Reduces the cost of redevelopment as the built-in secure software design detects and fixes security issues during the development phase.

Conclusion
In the face of growing cybersecurity scares, enterprises should leverage software engineering services to ensure the code under development remains free of glitches and can withstand (and recover from) any malicious threat. This helps to secure the interests of the organization, clients, and end-customers. 

Article Source:
https://community.nasscom.in/

Ways to formulate a Quality Engineering strategy

 

Today, enterprises are facing a multitude of challenges such as a rapidly changing technology landscape, a plethora of customer touchpoints in an omnichannel environment, rising customer expectations, and budget constraints, among others. To meet these challenges as well as to create value and deliver quality software, enterprises need to follow a robust software quality assurance strategy. However, these would entail using scalable and reusable assets to test and integrate the software modules in the SDLC.

Shift-left testing in the Agile model of development allows for testing alongside development and has the ability to detect glitches before the code goes into production. In a day and age where enterprises are required to deliver top-notch quality products in quick succession and provide periodic updates to let them function in an omnichannel environment, quality engineering is the way ahead.

By taking a quality engineering approach, enterprises can ensure the software product aligns with the business objectives and meets the quality standards. It ensures the product is designed in such a way that glitches or vulnerabilities are eliminated, and the final product emerges sans any performance issues.

Quality engineering has assumed increased salience due to the rising incidences of cybercrime. It is common knowledge that cybercrime is able to spread its tentacles due to the prevalence of glitch-prone software applications, not to speak of a user base indifferent to the requirement of stringently following the security guidelines. QE services can integrate various checks and balances in the software hierarchically to minimize the impact of cybercrime. Any software quality engineering services would involve the following (and more).

• Uphold the quality of the product or service as per the project specifications, quality standards, and business requirements
• Plan the quality assurance strategy
• Data collection and analysis
• Detection of defects
• Identification of risks in the value chain
• Analysis of the end-user feedback to enhance the quality of the product

Reasons to implement quality engineering

To further add to the points mentioned above, enterprise quality engineering needs to be implemented in the SDLC for the following reasons:

• To achieve the highest quality for the software product
• To ensure that all business requirements are met
• To minimize the chances of software failure due to the presence of glitches, bugs, or vulnerabilities
• To avoid expenses on implementing changes on the product after its release
• To deliver superior customer experiences and increase customer satisfaction

Core service offerings of digital quality engineering

Quality engineering is comprehensive in its scope and touches every aspect of software development. The core offerings may include

Agile/DevOps testing: Testing of the code is conducted simultaneously with development and includes the operations as well.

Service virtualization: Since various test variables are not always available in real-time, their absence may impact the quality of testing negatively. Thus, using service virtualization, the required assets can be generated virtually and used in the testing process to deliver better outcomes.

Security testing: An essential part of DevOps, security testing is about identifying the vulnerabilities in the product/system and fixing them to prevent the ingress of malware.

Test automation: Manual testing can be exhaustive for testers and may allow the inherent glitches in the software application to escape their attention. However, by automating the testing process, certain repetitive tests like regression testing can be conducted non-stop leading to better identification of glitches.

How to formulate a result-oriented strategy for quality engineering

To empower the digital transformation journey, enterprises need to re-engineer their QA and testing processes and implement software quality engineering in the following ways:

Integrate quality at the top: Any quality engineering company would entail buy-in from its management to implement changes in its workflows, tools, teams, and methodologies. At the same time, the management can let the workforce know about the benefits of implementing quality engineering and adopting the new system.

Make test automation an integral part: QE services have to run continuous testing on the software application to validate its quality against various metrics. Continuous testing shall involve people, processes, technologies, and tools. Here, test automation can be a handful while checking repetitive processes like regressions when a new change is introduced to the code. Further, writing the right test script to execute automated testing would require the selection and usage of the right tools.

Collaborate with teams: As digital quality engineering may need developers to function as testers and vice-versa, there should be a synergy among cross-functional teams. QE is also about driving accountability across processes to ensure quality by using the right technologies and tools.

Use of AI and ML: The implementation of the QE process may include the integration of AI and ML technologies for better analysis of real-time data, metrics, reports, and logs leading to the prediction of glitches.

Conclusion

Quality engineering has become a critical part of the software development process given its myriad benefits and the capability to eliminate glitches beforehand. It ought to be adopted by enterprises to develop and deliver quality products.

Article Source:

https://huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/

How are Agile, DevOps, and Continuous Testing connected

 

Digital transformation brought about by quality software applications and robust hardware platforms helps to create a competitive advantage for enterprises across verticals and geographies. Now it is no longer about choosing between speed or quality of software but to incorporate both when delivering to the end customers. With Agile and DevOps being embraced by enterprises to stay up the competitive curve, Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD,) and Continuous Testing (CT) have become the catalysts to drive quality digital transformation.

It goes without saying that Continuous Testing has become critical and challenging. Further, CI and CD are primarily tool and team-driven activities while CT is comprehensive in its scope. It includes teams, tools, testers, and services. The importance of driving and integrating code changes cannot be ignored in the SDLC. At the same time, unless the automated delivery system can figure out the impact of such code changes on customer experience, CI and CD could become meaningless.

The rising competition and changing market dynamics have put pressure on enterprises to innovate and change. And Agile and DevOps in consonance with continuous testing offer the framework to address the requirement. At the heart of digital transformation lies the need to deliver software quickly, safely, and reliably, which can be achieved through continuous testing in DevOps.

Why continuous testing?

The customers of today are wont to use software applications across a plethora of devices, operating platforms, browsers, and networks. They want the applications to be high performing, navigable, scalable, secure, intuitive, and fast-loading. These attributes can only be fostered if the software development process supports a robust QA mechanism in the Agile or DevOps mold. Unlike in the traditional or manual way of testing where QA comes after development as a separate discipline, the Agile or DevOps model has QA being part of an integrated team with development.

In Agile testing, the software under various stages of development is tested for performance, security, usability, scalability, and many more. Thus, glitches are identified and fixed early in the SDLC leading to the delivery of quality software. A continuous testing strategy enables enterprises to put in place the processes, systems, and automation to accelerate the time to market, install improved feedback loops, and deliver desirable business outcomes. The outcomes, on their part, comprise top quality products and services, operational efficiency, responsiveness, competitive differentiation, and enhanced customer experience.

The continuous testing services create a quick and risk-free feedback loop for the QA specialists in the Agile testing pipeline to understand (and act upon) the issues faced by the end customers. These services help to manage business risks borne out of the complexity and pace of application delivery.

Why Agile-DevOps?

To thrive in a competitive business environment, enterprises must address issues like time constraints and resource mobilization to build-test-deliver applications that are qualitatively superior, secure, and stable. This engenders a renewed focus on continuous test automation and collaboration.

• The DevOps approach is ideal for enterprises that struggle to manage demand and implement rapid changes in the SDLC.
• DevOps allows enterprises to address their acceleration and integration needs by establishing a toolchain that cuts across the realms of development, QA, integration, management, and delivery.  

• The silo-driven Development and Operations teams should be integrated to drive better collaboration. Further, the pipeline should have a built-in mechanism to receive continuous feedback and to generate better quality features and functionalities.

DevOps: the extension of Agile

In the Agile model of software development, developers create user stories comprising smaller chunks of the build to generate feedback loops and to align the product to the market need. It started with small teams comprising developers and QA testers working collaboratively and efficiently. Thereafter came the notion of scale wherein the software code was developed in short iterations. However, down the pipeline, when it came to deployment and receiving feedback, the silo-driven processes stifled what was expected of Agile. 

Consequently, the process was further refined by automating and streamlining the SDLC and incorporating Continuous Integration (CI). In CI, the code is tested repeatedly and integrated to create a stream of small but frequent releases. However, these challenged the Ops team, which found it difficult to keep pace with Development. So, while Agile addressed the issues developers faced with glitches being passed on to the next phase, the DevOps approach turned out to be more effective. It treated the entire SDLC as a monolith of collaborative processes that generate better outcomes.

Continuous Delivery and Testing

To support the strategic business needs, enterprises seem to have graduated from performing CI to implementing CD. In doing so, they have finetuned both processes and technical frameworks. So, from creating CI builds and executing testing to achieving deployment, the Continuous Delivery and Continuous Testing methodologies have covered all dimensions of the organization’s operations. These ensure the quick and frequent deployment of quality software applications to the end customers. The questions to be asked while implementing a continuous testing framework are:

• Is the software application deployable during its lifestyle?
• Can the software application be deployed while the team is working on its new features?
• Can the process receive quick and automated feedback each time a change is implemented?
• Can a push-button deployment be performed for a software version in any environment?

How does Agile, DevOps, and Continuous Testing benefit enterprises

These interconnected methodologies help enterprises in several ways.

• Accelerated time to market
• Better productivity and efficiency
• Frequent releases of reliable and stable builds
• Capability to build products aligned to the market
• Better feedback mechanism
• Superior customer experiences

Conclusion

The need for enterprises to be the disrupter in the market by producing or delivering top-quality software products or services has put focus on methodologies like Agile, DevOps, and Continuous Testing. The complementary relationship among the three methodologies has led to the overhauling of processes and working culture in favor of a new paradigm where quality deployment is a continuous process.

Article Source:

https://devops.com/