Tutorial on DevOps Testing: According to a recent study by RightScale, DevOps is adopted by 54% of firms, indicating a rising interest in this method.
In this tutorial, we’ll discuss how this new technique for software development impacts QA testing and how the QA role must adapt to this shift.
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Dive in => Comprehensive DevOps Tutorial Series
In this tutorial, we’ll examine in depth the influence of DevOps on QA and its tasks.
What You Will Acquire:
What Is DevOps?
DevOps, a blend of Development & Operations, is a software construction technique that aims to combine all operations of the software development lifecycle into one unified cycle.
This strategy necessitates strengthening collaboration among stakeholders engaged in the software construction process, specifically Development, QA, and Operations.
DevOps Cycle
A perfect DevOps cycle begins with:
- Code created by the Developer
- Assembly and deployment of binaries in a QA environment
- Execution of test cases
- Ultimately, a seamless integrated flow for production deployment.
This methodology heavily accentuates the automation of building, deploying, and testing procedures. Continuous Integration (CI) instruments and Automation Testing software become standard in a DevOps cycle.
Why DevOps?
While Agile and DevOps Testing may have slight differences, those familiar with Agile will find it simpler to collaborate with and eventually adopt DevOps. Despite the successful application of Agile principles in development and QA iterations, the operations aspect is often contentious. DevOps aims to bridge this divide.
Instead of just Continuous Integration, DevOps introduces “Continuous Development”, where the code that is written and committed to Version Control is constructed, deployed, tested, and installed in the Production environment, ready for end-user use.
This methodology benefits all parties involved as it standardizes environments and procedures, while automating every step in the software delivery chain. Stakeholders can concentrate on designing and coding top-quality deliverables instead of fretting about the construction, operations, and QA process.
The time-to-live from when the code is written and committed to being deployed on production for end-user use is drastically reduced to approximately 3-4 hours.
In a nutshell, DevOps can be viewed as an augmentation of Agile, or “Agile with a boost”.
Altered Role Of QA In DevOps
Traditionally, QA would get a build deployed in their specific environment, and they would then engage in Functional & Regression testing. The build would generally remain with QA for several days before getting signed off. However, DevOps drastically alters this procedure.
The function of QA evolves in DevOps Testing:
- QA needs to synchronize their efforts with the DevOps cycle.
- They must ensure all their test cases are automated and achieve almost 100% code coverage.
- Standardizing their environments and automating deployment on QA devices.
- Automating tasks pre-testing, cleanups, post-testing tasks, etc., and aligning them with the Continuous Integration cycle.
As previously stated, DevOps requires strong coordination between different roles in the delivery chain. This also implies that the boundaries between various roles in the chain become less rigid.
DevOps encourages all to contribute to the chain. Developers can configure deployments, deployment engineers can add test cases to the QA repository, and QA engineers can include their automated test cases into the DevOps cycle.
As a whole, everyone in the chain takes on the responsibility for superior quality and punctuality of the deliverables.
DevOps and Test Automation
To achieve the speed and flexibility that DevOps provides, all testing processes must be automated and set up to run automatically upon deployment in the QA environment. Specialized Automation Testing tools and continuous integration tools are utilized to achieve this integration.
It is also necessary to develop an advanced Automation Testing framework that allows for quick scripting of new test cases.
DevOps Testing Strategy: Advice for DevOps Success
- Identify the test cases that must be executed for a specific build.
- The test execution needs to be streamlined and effective.
- QA and Dev should collaborate to pinpoint the areas affected by a particular build and execute associated test cases along with a sanity test pass.
- Configure niche code analysis and coverage tools to ensure almost 100% code coverage.
- The practice of executing all regression test cases for each test pass is becoming outdated.
- Formulate a strategy for testing new features, offering interim builds to QA for creating and running automation tests until the code stabilizes for deployment in the Production setting.
- Standardize testing environments and automate deployments.
- Employ automation techniques to carry out Automation Testing runs across various cross-platform environments (and cross-browser for web applications).
- Concurrent execution of tests aids in reducing time-to-live, which is a vital aspect of successful DevOps implementation.
- Establish exit criteria for each test run to make go/no-go decisions for Production based on the test outcomes.
- Report and rectify any blocker or critical bugs found prior to deploying the code in the Production environment.
Application Monitoring
To detect and report issues early, QA must be proactive. Setting up monitoring on the Production environment can help uncover bugs before they result in failures.
Monitoring specialized counters such as response times, memory and CPU utilization, etc., can provide valuable feedback on the end-user experience.
For Instance, should the average login response time gradually increase across different builds, QA should proactively report this issue for optimizing the login code. This preventative measure stops future builds from causing end-user frustration due to lengthy response times.
QA can also periodically carry out a small subset of high-priority existing test cases on the Production setting to actively monitor its stability. This tactic assists in the identification of bugs like intermittent issues or cases that cannot be reproduced, making the application more stable and improving end-user gratification.
These monitors should be configured to run automatically, providing extensive reporting such as logs and failure screenshots.
Conclusion
Over time, software development models have progressed from Waterfall to V-Model and then to Agile, with DevOps being the next evolution.
DevOps signifies ongoing advancement in software development methodologies. It is crucial to adopt, understand, and implement DevOps in your organization.
To guarantee that your automation efforts contribute to the chain and are adaptable to changes, mastering various automation and continuous integration tools is crucial. You may work on projects involving alpha, beta, and UAT environments before deploying in the production setting.
The fundamental principle remains identical: automation is vital to a successful DevOps cycle. Nonetheless, as a QA professional, you must also ascertain the optimum level of automation for your testing efforts.
About the Author: Aniket Deshpande serves as a QA Manager at AFour Technologies, Pune, and has more than 9 years of experience in software testing across different domains and platforms. He is passionate about DevOps and provides consultancy to organizations to assist them in adopting DevOps testing strategies.
If you are keen on learning more about DevOps and its associated test methodology or if you are seeking to implement DevOps in your organization, feel free to contact the author.
What are your views on DevOps testing? Do you believe that collaboration between developers and operations can be beneficial to projects?
We welcome your comments and suggestions about this article.
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