Why do Agile and DevOps need a robust Test Automation strategy?

Test Automation

The rapid pace of technological changes has led the quality assurance teams to develop new strategies. The need to develop cutting edge products and deliver them rapidly to customers have made test automation an integral part of any digital transformation strategy. Moreover, the positioning of customer experience at the core of every development-testing-delivery initiative has meant executing continuous integration and testing throughout the SDLC and beyond.

                        

Test automation shall not have the desired impact if not implemented in the Agile or DevOps mould. This is to ensure the final product remains free of glitches or bugs and delivers a rich user experience. To achieve the said objective, an ecosystem of quality excellence needs to be created across the organization. It will evaluate risks and align processes, systems, practices and people in accordance to the business objectives. In other words, a greater collaboration between departments and breaking down of silos. Before delving into how best the test automation services in your organization are aligned with Agile and DevOps, let us discuss what the terms mean.

Agile and DevOps

To address the challenges of increased competition, shifting customer preferences, and changing technology stacks, businesses cannot afford to market glitch prone products. This has led to the reorientation of the entire quality test management strategy – from manual QA to a robust QA automation testing. The latter has brought about the following advantages.

                                                                                                                                       

·         Stabilizing the code with proper testing and integration during the development process.

·         Expanding the test coverage area significantly.

·         Quick execution of tests as opposed to the slow pace of manual testing.

·         Considerable savings in time and cost due to the elimination of rework post development of a product.

However, the test automation services too have their share of woes – high maintenance cost, slow execution time, and frequent failure. These have arisen due to the emergence of complex test environments, accelerated release processes, unreliable networks, different device configuration etc. This is where methodologies like Agile and DevOps come into the picture with their emphasis on continuous integration and delivery. The Agile methodology aims at shift left testing wherein a software is tested during the development phase itself. In Agile, the testing team, instead of working independently, becomes a part of the development sprint. The methodology calls for frequent testing of codes during development so that the final code comes out glitch free.

Even though Agile has led to the development of glitch free products thanks to the use of test automation tools, it has failed to create and enforce total quality management across businesses. Also, when it comes to offering a rich customer experience, the whole organization needs to be in sync as far as QA is concerned. This has given rise to DevOps, which aims at a greater collaboration between the Development and Operations teams. It helps to derive real time insights into the risks and delivers actionable results.

The major objective of adopting Agile cum DevOps through automation testing is to ensure Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI and CD). This necessitates the breaking down of barriers between development and operations by using a collaborative test management software. The QA automation strategy should complement the development team by rapidly testing the codes in short sprints.

The successful alignment of automation testing with Agile and DevOps would lead to the following outcomes.

End to end integration: Find out if the QA automation process ensures the successful integration of codes in the SDLC. The automated test script, apart from running the unit tests should integrate the codes as well. This validates the functionalities and features of a software.

Faster development cycles: The test automation experts should carry out a rigorous checking of codes and send them back to developers for correction. The testing process should be fast enough to meet the overall objective of accelerating the time to market.

Incorporation of new features: The rapidly changing market dynamics should keep the development and testing teams updated with the latest trends and features. The QA automation process should validate the latest features that are introduced based on customer feedback and market analysis.

Sharing test tools: The various QA automation teams across processes should be synergized to achieve greater cohesion, consistency, speed and quality by creating a test automation centre of excellence. This would lead to the sharing of tools, platforms, environments, and resources as per needs to achieve better outcomes.

Conclusion

To achieve a rich customer experience, businesses should ensure the delivery of a glitch free product. This can only happen when the quality assurance team carries out continuous integration and delivery through automation.

This Article is originally published at Medium.com, Is your Test Automation strategy aligned with Agile and DevOps?