Ever since the inception of DevOps, it has been lapped up by software companies around the world. To put it very simply, DevOps is a set of practices or methodology that integrates all the developmental and operational tasks together to give out faster and more reliable results.

With such a strong core idea, it is only natural that developers, designers and testers all love it so much. However, keep in mind that to achieve the desired results, you need to instil a set of practices throughout the project.

So, let us help you understand these practices and also tell you the advantages of implementing them.  

Best Practices for DevOps Testing

The set of practices you should ideally follow to get the best results are based on both the cultural and technical side of things. While the cultural practices help in forming a successful team, the technical practices focus on executing the project.

Let us first take you through the top cultural practices that you need to instil at your workplace.

Collaborate and share responsibilities

The core value on which the whole DevOps methodology is based is the collaborative process it involves among the developers, designers, testers and the QA team. The idea is to gel the development and the operations team together within a system where they share their workflows, tasks, progress and other necessary information. As a result, they share responsibilities and work as a cohesive unit, which helps in delivering faster results.

Provide team autonomy

A very important and effective cultural practice you must definitely incorporate is to give both the development and operations team full autonomy over making decisions. This reduces the time that otherwise takes to get approvals from seniors. DevOps lets the teams arrange and perform the tasks at their own discretion, thus resulting in faster results. However, for this to work out seamlessly, you should have a team of experienced and highly-skilled professionals.

Automate as much as possible

One of the key cultural changes you need to bring is to give the workforce more time to develop and design the key functionalities of the product. The idea should be to prevent resources from performing tedious, repetitive and time-consuming jobs and instead enable them to invest their time in innovative processes that actually impact the end result. The only solution to this is to automate as many repetitive and tedious tests as possible.

Now that you know the cultural practices, let us explain the technical practices that will make the whole process smooth and functional.

Keep integrating the codes with the master branch

One of common practices seen in most projects is where coders keep developing the codes for weeks or even months before merging it with the master branch. This can seriously affect the end result, as you end up finding errors pretty late in the project, which delays the completion of the project.

DevOps changes this practice by promoting continuous integration by asking the coders to merge the codes to the master branch from time to time. This helps in identifying the bugs as and when they occur, instead of finding them through a huge dump of codes in the end.

Continuous Delivery and Deployment

This is probably one of the most advanced practices of DevOps that has the potential to change the game completely. The idea is to build a system in which a new code, when integrated into the master branch, gets automatically delivered and deployed in the testing environment.

For this to happen, developers create a build-artefact that is ready for deployment, whenever it is called upon. The aim is to reduce the time involved in the production phase by automating the movement of codes from one stage to the other.

By making the delivery and deployment of codes in the testing environment work simultaneously, you can quickly test the changes and prepare the product for release.

Keep testing simultaneously

One of the key technical practices you need to add in your repertoire while following a DevOps methodology is to keep testing the codes and features as and when they are made. The concept of creating the complete schemes of codes and just handing it over to the testing and QA team does not work here. It should be a collaborative effort where the developers keep providing with test cases and the testers keep generating test environments to test the cases simultaneously.

However, make sure that you do not automate the process completely, as manual testing and monitoring in such cases is crucial.

Always go for building a minimum viable product

More often than not, developers and testers put months of effort to create a product that is perfect in their eyes, only to see the client being displeased at the end of it. On the contrary, DevOps urges you to practice a method where you focus on creating a core deliverable, which is aligned with the initial agenda of the client and is delivered to the client first.

Once you provide the minimum viable product, you should collaborate with them for the road ahead. Including the client as part of the development team will give you better insights of what they exactly want, leaving you in a much better position to deliver the ideal product in quick time.

Advantages of DevOps Testing

Bring a culture of collaboration at workplace

As mentioned above, DevOps helps you to break down the walls between the development and operations team and promote them to work together as a team. This collaborative effort surely improves the work culture in your company.

Increase production speed

Since everything is integrated and performed simultaneously, you can increase the production speed considerably. With teams having autonomy on taking decisions and with AI-based test automations sets backing them, you are bound to get faster results.

Improve scalability

With numerous points of automation and constant monitoring of every step involved in the project, it makes the whole system incredibly scalable. You can accommodate even the big changes without disrupting the flow and the timeline of the project in a huge way.  

Minimise errors and improve reliability

Thanks to the practice of continuous testing, both automated and manual, the final products end up being error-free. Furthermore, continuous integration, delivery and deployment of codes help in identifying and rectifying the errors quickly. All this makes the final product more reliable, which is exactly what you and the client want.

DevOps is surely a methodology in software development and testing that improves the overall output of the project and hence is rightly embraced by people around the world. If you are looking to avail the best services of DevOps for your software, get in touch with TestUnity.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.