Managing the Obscure Boundaries Among Development, QA, and DevOps

As technology has progressed so have the processes with IT companies. DevOps is fast becoming the pinnacle framework for software development organizations with the promise of enhanced business agility, accelerated product delivery, and greater product quality. Moving away from the traditional waterfall approach that involved labor-intensive tasks such as manual software testing, DevOps streamlines, automates, and reduces the development life cycle.

This has become a requirement in today’s growing competitiveness in the software app market. The transition of software practices includes more than just process change or the adoption of various tools. People sit at the heart of effective processes and DevOps is built on the foundation of reducing barriers between roles.

Modernized Characters in a Modern Process

The success of DevOps begins with a refreshed mindset about key roles within the software life cycle.

This includes having the right people with the right skills who are collectively willing to adapt, communicate, and collaborate. This is greatly different from former business models where development and QA resources would work in silos unaware of each other’s roadblocks and often required clarity of the business requirements’ context.

Each role was distinct as work moved along the assembly line. DevOps has changed philosophies and responsibilities to deliver enhanced velocity.

Development

Both past and present processes begin with the development of understanding business requirements. However, in a DevOps environment, these conditions are not in lengthy documents with a deadline that is many months in the future as you would discover in a waterfall approach. Development is designed in user stories with 2 – 4 week sprints in which requirements are described for delivery. These requirements present direction on how to build the software logic in the most effective and practical way.

QA

Quality assurance engineers retain their focus on software quality and employ a combination of automated and manual testing while assuring adherence to the initial business requirements. Traditionally, QA got a build from development at which point, a series of testing started and could take up to 2 weeks (or more) to finish. Prior to getting the build for testing, QA had little, if any, interaction with the development stage.

Today, QA is more aligned with development, and it gets included in the process from the beginning. QA also includes more test automation services that include pre-testing and post-testing checks to perform as much code coverage as possible. Automation also needs a new skill set and standardization of testing environments.

DevOps

DevOps is the merging of development and operations, which needs a change in both technology and culture. Oftentimes organizations build DevOps as an aside to development and operations, which beats the purpose. Organizations must be prudent with the adoption of DevOps because new roles, labels, and titles don’t necessarily produce real change.

The DevOps methodology combines the functions of software development and operations inside the same cycle. The goal is to enhance collaboration across teams and deliver better experiences inside and to the end customer. To accomplish this, a high level of collaboration is required between the major stakeholders in the software development process, being dev, QA, and operations.

How do Development and Quality Assurance fit in DevOps?

In DevOps, developers, and QA both perform equally significant roles. In fact, every actor in the process is liable for the timeliness and quality of deliverables. This makes the boundaries of roles acceptable. While titles such as developer and QA are identical, their scope in roles has improved. From the outset of establishing requirements, test cases are generated at the development and QA levels.

The Developer’s Role in DevOps

 Development now has a larger emphasis on automating the testing, build, and deployment tasks and a more intimate understanding of the continuous integration cycle. And it needs a more forward-thinking manner where developers require to consider dependencies and environments that go past the individual’s pc. Gone are the days of utilizing the old excuse of “well, it runs on my machine”. After building the code and performing initial tests, developers then promote the code package to the next environment, which is typically the testing environment.

For developers, it is no longer just generating code from requirements. They require encapsulating testing methods and implement continuous monitoring as well. Engagement with testing is more comprehensive than before, which has been a catalyst for including automated testing. Having developers think like testers is an appended step in assuring better product quality.

The QA Role in DevOps

DevOps QA has transitioned to a more important role in supporting a team that builds robust software. As the developers’ roles and mindset have shifted, so has that of DevOps QA engineers. They require to be able to test an application using a variety of tools while also being competent in fixing code.

Although not every phase of testing can be automated, it’s not possible to stick to manual testing and still be agile. Automation is essential for everyday testing and for automating regression testing. And if QA strives to adopt this change, the quality of the product will degenerate, and bottlenecks will accumulate in the software life cycle. A QA approach using best practices is highly relevant and key to attaining superior product quality.

What Are the Benefits and Difficulties in DevOps Management?

When implemented and adopted efficiently, significant benefits can be accomplished with DevOps. However, it is not a silver bullet for every company and every team. It doesn’t come without its difficulties.

Here are notable advantages as well as the difficulties that come with maintaining an effective DevOps process:

Benefits

• Product quality is much greater with test cases described early on and testing points added in the development process. Additionally, automation regularly checks new code that hasn’t affected core functionality or broken core dependencies.
• Product stability enables teams to spend less time on support and security issues. A continuous cycle of ongoing defects and fixes is frustrating for dev and QA, as well as the customer. Stability implies that the DevOps team can consume more time on developing new characteristics and skilling up on new technologies. Enhanced expertise involves product improves and staff turnover stays low.
• Deployment speed increases so developers are able to deploy updates or new features more frequently as opposed to acquiring enhancements once a month or twice a year.
• If all the above are accomplished throughout the process, the customer satisfaction rate improves with having a stable, feature-rich app.

Challenges

• Having control and command leadership style doesn’t match in well with a true DevOps environment. It relies on more than one mind to determine, create, and deliver. Teams are connected and should promote innovation and inspiration while building a space where people feel safe to share thoughts and involve in creating solutions.
• Poor product management strategy can limit speed, reliability, and consistency. This would be the opposite of what DevOps is about as it’s meant to give organizations the competitive edge with high software delivery. A solid strategy includes planning out new features, knowing the customers’ requirements as well as the competitive landscape. It is necessary to decrease risk while maximizing results.
• Poor design and development can make or break efforts. There have been significant developments in software engineering and it’s essential to stay abreast of these changes. Examples involve having an updated technology stack, going away from monolithic architectures, and examining and employing microservices. Managing outdated and cumbersome software doesn’t give itself well to a DevOps environment.

Tips for Efficient Management

To be successful in DevOps, you require a good foundation to have all parts of the process moving while having transparency over the environment. Some useful tips can help key players assure effectiveness in managing the DevOps process.

• Focus on communication. Having a pool of resources operating in a fast and adaptable environment requires proper communication and visibility of all moving parts.
• Never underestimate the significance of testing. Testing over different environments and configurations is important to product stability.
• Size does matter. Small cycles, small projects, and small teams encourage agility, trust, and operational efficiency.
• Stay realistic but relevant. While it may be fascinating to throw too much at a DevOps process too quickly, it can recoil. Strive for continuous improvement but ensure there is enough time without putting additional pressure and expectations on the team.

Also Read: Bug Severity Vs Priority In Testing

Conclusion

DevOps is the future of software development organizations. It brings teams together to help each other. Roles overlap but it enables for the making of multidisciplinary teams while training the talent of high performers. When DevOps works well, it operates great. People at all levels of the company profit when everyone can deliver the best results to the client.

DevOps is a journey, and the advantages are not realized overnight. Understanding that teams can be multiskilled provides for a shared understanding, and enhanced collaboration and innovation. DevOps and the roles within highlight it’s an environment of continuous development for people and products.

At TestUnity, we strive for the highest quality in every project, and our professional QA specialists are ready to ensure it. Contact us if you’re looking for a dedicated team to enhance your product’s quality.

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.