DevOps encourages development and operations teams to function as one single cohesive unit, focused on delivering business values across the IT value chain. It also helps in release management, delivery and deployment with continuous automation. Here we will discuss how DevOps can be helpful to deliver continuous integration & continuous delivery in QA.
Most of the traditional software development organizations consider Quality Assurance (QA) as a separate function in the overall development process. QA is a process in software development cycle (SDLC) to ensure that the developed software meets and complies with pre-defined quality standards. In a traditional way, test teams are subjected to work on a pre-defined time line to meet the delivery schedule. So it becomes very difficult to optimize both time and cost.
DevOps is projected as the next higher level of agile software development practice that enables coding and testing to take place simultaneously with timely collaboration and communication amongst all concerned functions/departments. It provides a framework that enables teams to speed-up software releases and gain faster time-to-market, even while ensuring quality at the same time. Traditional role of QA is to detect bugs, but in DevOps, the key responsibility of QA is to avoid the bugs from occurring in the first place.
Test automation tools are capable of performing tests, reporting outcomes and comparing results with earlier test runs. Tests carried out with these tools can be run repetitively, at any time of day. Test automation framework is a set of guidelines, coding standards, concepts, processes, practices and more, which provides an execution environment for automation test scripts. It allows the user to develop, execute and report on the automation test scripts in an effective and efficient manner.
Build Verification Test (BVT) is a set of tests run on every new build to verify that build is testable, before it is released to a test team for further testing. These test cases are fundamental functionality test cases that ensure application is stable and can be tested systematically. BVT saves time, cost, resources and efforts for test teams to setup and test a build. Test environment virtualization enables optimization of various simultaneously started processes. It can make testing much easier and efficient by eliminating certain dependencies and bring down the cost of setting one or multiple test environments. It considerably increases IT infrastructure flexibility and the efficiency of hardware usage.
The role of QA in DevOps becomes more of an enabler or gatekeeper that links developers and the operations teams. DevOps is an approach to highlight swift, small, iterative development and deployment of applications. DevOps flawlessly integrates all the three functions – Dev, Ops and QA as a single IT entity that deliver value.
Take an example of an ecommerce portal. In its release environment, hourly releases are very common. In such cases, load, stress, and security testing become important. With DevOps approach, faster timely releases can be delivered by eliminating the opportunity for people to make errors. The continuous performance evaluation of the portal helps in improving customer experience.
DevOps helps in creating rapid, reliable and repeatable processes. It also benefits in achieving process improvements throughout the software development life cycle by identifying issues and recommending necessary improvements. With the help of DevOps, testers can leverage best practices in agile testing, continuous integration and test-driven development to accelerate QA processes and reduce cycle time.
eInfochips DevOps services span across DevOps consulting, implementations, toolchain to cloud managed services. With eInfochips DevOps Services and QA and Test Automation practice, reduce your release cycle for faster time to market. Get to know on how you can apply DevOps in the age of connected devices.
