Testing in Production: What’s the Best Technique?

When it arrives at software testing, the more is usually the better. That is why many organizations are now utilizing continuous testing practices to assure they deliver the highest quality product to their users. 

Some people might think testing in production is a symbol of lower testing quality since they think it is a concept of deploying poorly tested applications to the end-user. Nonetheless, this is not the correct method to use this technique.

If we test in a production environment, it is not because it was badly tested during the earlier stages. Rather, it is the final defense shield against any real-time bugs.

Another reason we might require to test in production is that some kinds of testing simply have to be done with the real users.

Advantages of  Testing in Production

• It can help us build a disaster rescue process creating our application more resilient toward unexpected collapses.
• Performing testing in production presents an advantage of access to production data which could be difficult to replicate in lower testing environments.
• Regular monitoring of an application in production decreases deployment risks.
• It can help in collecting valuable user feedback via releasing beta programs.

What Testing to Perform in Production

There are a handful of methods that can be used – let’s now unravel the main ones we can utilize.

Regression testing

The first thing we want to do after each software release is to ensure that:

• No new bugs were raised during the deployment (especially if the deployment process is not fully automated)
• The newly released code has smoothly integrated with the previously existing code. This is specifically crucial if the staging environment or at least one of its related microservices isn’t an actual copy of the production environment.

To sum it up, you ought to run as many regression tests in production as required to deliver you with the peace of mind that the release went smoothly and no new bugs were introduced during the release.

A/B Testing

One of the testing mechanisms that can only be executed in the live environment is A/B testing, which suggests releasing two (or more) different versions of an application/software to anticipate if real users pick one over the other. It is a statistical activity where we divide the user base into numerous groups, namely A and B. Then offer a base version to group A users and a little modified version to group B users. Ultimately, we can compare both sets of user groups to predict the application behavior to make an informed decision on which version to roll out for future releases.

As you might have thought, A/B testing cannot be conducted outside the production environment, but when accomplished with real users effectively, it can deliver valuable user feedback for all application stakeholders.

Volume Testing

Although high user volume can be affected in a lower environment, it is still a good idea to conduct volume testing in a production environment to obtain the most precise results. It delivers statistics for any type of website load, the responsiveness of web pages, and server performance while servicing client requests.

Continuous Monitoring

Continuous monitoring comes as another set of testing techniques in production that can help determine issues that could only arrive in prod.

Similarly, there are two sub-categories in it – real user monitoring and simulation monitoring.

Real user monitoring closely examines real user requests arriving at the application server, whereas simulation monitoring is setting up automated users who will constantly make requests to the application’s APIs to review response time and failures.

Due to the general use of software engineering and QA best practices, we can now afford to test in production safely.

Risks Involved

Depending on the kind of tests, testing in production can handle some risks which you should account for in advance. Such risks involve:

• Loss of data.
• Relying on the user to deliver feedback for defects.
• Having test data incorporated with the production data.

System crashes and negative user experiences top the list of risks involved as they can develop a bad perception of a company and its product guiding to financial losses. There is always a proper way and a wrong way to utilize the new techniques, thus “Better safe than sorry” is perfectly applicable here.

Best Practices – What to Employ or What not to?

Now, let us ponder over some best methods or approaches to follow while doing testing in production, which could protect us from the above risks involved.

Stress Testing

Since production testing intends to determine bugs in the real world, it requires it to occur in the most difficult real-world conditions. So, stress testing the application with high traffic is a way to choose how app functions work when the load suddenly increases with greater incoming requests. That way, we can assure to follow some error recovery procedures in such extreme conditions.

Forced Failure Testing

Deploy a Chaos Monkey to present regular random failures like a system crash to create recovery mechanisms even more powerful. An analogy for this might be pushing someone (or something) to face hardships or harsh environments to accomplish a saturation or immunity to such bad results.

Also Read: Fundamentals Of QA Outsourcing Services In 2022

How TestUnity Can Help

If you’ve been following us for some time, you might already comprehend that TestUnity is the optimal answer for automated end-to-end UI testing across mobile and web platforms. 

TestUnity enhances software testing productivity by assuring thorough test coverage, intuitive workflows and interface, and most of all, automation at your fingertips. We provide the testing services on-demand, serve with projects of any scale, and are ready to start with a few days’ advance notice. Choose to team up with a QA services provider like TestUnity. Our team of testing experts specializes in QA and has years of experience implementing tests with different testing software. Get in touch with a TestUnity expert today.

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