Introduction
Digital technology and Open Source platforms are sweeping the digital and disruptive technology world, and to keep up with the pace of competition, enterprises must constantly thrive to operate and embrace Agile and DevOps environment with continuous improvements.
In today’s world, enterprises are catering towards and relying on next generation technologies like AI/ML, Cloud, Mobility, etc. This is likely to cause:
- Increased defects leakage into production environment
- Reduced test cycle time for defect fix and release updates
Lately, enterprises are required to support multiple releases in a short period of time with both minor and major changes to sustain fierce competition, which requires them to continuously validate releases comprehensively across all platforms, that can be very expensive and time consuming if not done correctly.
This is where DevTestOps (DTO) steps in ensuring QA process starts before the first developer in the team begins to write code and it continues throughout the life of the software.
DevTestOps
DTO is an engineering methodology, which requires a software application to be developed according to DevOps principles and ‘Fail First’ approach wherein all stakeholders are united on a common set of quality standards, best practices and business outcomes.
Journey Towards DevTestOps with Continuous Quality Engineering
A methodical approach is required to implement Continuous Quality Engineering (CQE) and obtain fast and continuous feedback on the quality of software product via end-to-end test automation. In addition, there needs to be clearly established quality check gates in QE cycle with comprehensive metrics on application development efficiency.
Enterprises need to transform themselves with respect to their business model, operational mechanisms, functionalities & technologies. Innominds recommends below mentioned BOFT Transformation Methodology for enterprises to enable smooth transition from their existing QA into CQE in a step by step process:
- B – Business Transformation
- O– Operational Transformation
- F – Functional Transformation
- T – Technological Transformation
The above-mentioned BOFT methodology must be combined with Dual Shift (Combination of Shift Left and Shift Right mechanisms) test methodology to ensure that there is continuous improvement and innovation in the business.
As part of Shift Left, the QE team is involved right from the ideation phase and continuously test the product features. As part of Shift Right, QE team is involved from inception of production release and continually monitor the application to provide recommendations and continuous quality improvements.
In Shift Left, QE team closely works with Dev and merge into the feature team to understand the basic functionality of the feature even before the development of a specific feature.
QE feature team needs to come up with optimized test cases with risk-based and model-based testing and TDD based unit test cases along with Dev team.
Once the build is deployed in staging environment, there needs to be a quick code review analysis and execute automated TDD UNIT scripts with fail first strategy, followed by smoke test.
By the time build is deployed into QA Environment for testing, majority of the P1 and P2 defects are in fixing stage and business is aware of the build quality.
Once the build is deployed, Shift Right is triggered into the production environment and there needs to be a continuous monitoring by QE team who conducts adhoc exploratory & usability tests to provide continuous feedback to the Dev team.
Based on the QE team feedback, the code is refined by the development and this is an infinite continuous improvement and integration cycle as mentioned in the given image.
Listed below are few highlights and best practices of DTO:
- Test Driven Lighthouse Delivery Model with Distributed Testing
- Fail-Fast Strategy
- Hyper Automated Testing
- Open Source Technology Adoption
- Code Scanning
- API Driven Testing
- Gatekeeper Strategies
Conclusion
To establish a flawless DevTestOps environment, QE team must closely work and collaborate with Dev team and seek support on continuous release & deployment through DevOps practice and continuously monitor production application for improvement and innovation.
About Innominds
Innominds is a leading Digital Transformation and Product Engineering company headquartered in San Jose, CA. It offers co-creation services to enterprises for building solutions utilising digital technologies focused on Devices, Apps, and Analytics. Innominds builds better outcomes securely for its clients through reliable advanced technologies like IoT, Blockchain, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, DevOps and Enterprise Mobility among others. From idea to commercialisation, we strive to build convergent solutions that help our clients grow their business and realise their market vision.
To know more about our offerings, please write to marketing@innominds.com