By Felix
Zoot Billson, Head of Marketing, Global App Testing
As the name suggests, Continuous Testing is a
method of testing software throughout the development and software operation
process.
Contrary to the more traditional method of
test automation, Continuous Testing implements testing at every stage, picking out
bugs and flaws as they come up.
It plays into the agile
vs waterfall debate, with agile practices aligning much more easily
with DevOps and Continuous Testing in general.
Like Continuous Testing, agile practices
involve constant improvement of the software. And while agile promotes a
cross-functional team across the development journey, Continuous Testing holds
that assessments should be carried out at every stage.
There are four key tenets of the development
side of DevOps: Continuous Integration, Testing, Delivery, and Deployment.
The First Step: Continuous
Integration
Rather confusingly, Continuous Integration
also involves testing. It's chronologically the first step in the development
plan - though, mainly due to the continuous nature of the beast, all four
processes should be occurring simultaneously.
In Continuous Integration, developers
regularly integrate any new code they have developed with the source code
repository. How often they do this depends on the business model and software
that they're developing.
Each time a developer integrates their code
with the source code, the entire source code is rebuilt; a series of unit tests
take place, and finally, the code gets a quality check. This ensures that any
bugs are caught pretty much instantaneously - which is always handy.
The earlier an error is caught, the easier it
generally is to fix. You can easily identify which lines of code might have
caused the problem, and isolate it accordingly.
Of course, if you're storing your source code
repository online, you should be aware of the cybersecurity risks and how to tackle them.
Source
What is Continuous Testing?
So if Continuous Integration involves testing,
where does Continuous Testing come into play?
Well, it's really just the next stage of
development. Once the initial code suggestions have made it past the quality
checks, the new code becomes part of the source code, and so the integration
process can start again.
Meanwhile, the product moves on. Continuous
Testing is more about whether the product fulfills the initial brief - and any
further user concerns - than about whether the code physically works or not.
Whether you're opting for retail or retailer wholesale, Continuous Testing can be
an incredibly useful step in the development process.
The Continuous Testing process prevents the
need for manual testing and is actually fully automated. Test scripts are developed
before the coding even begins - in response to what the product should be doing.
This is in contrast to Automated Testing,
which integrates automatic test scripts only after the code has been developed.
These test scripts then run continuously -
hence the name - as soon as the new code has been integrated.
What Is the Advantage of
Continuous Testing?
The big advantage of Continuous Testing is
that, as with Continuous Integration, feedback is rapid and specific. Because
the test scripts are built before the
code, they should already have a particular end result in mind: one that
perfectly matches the brief.
A subset of this is localization testing - but
what is localization testing? Localization
testing aims to create a product that is customized for a particular region or
language. It helps to check that the product is fully usable in the region it
is designed for.
Source
In Continuous Testing, there is no waiting
period in which developers scramble to produce tests that cater to that
particular line of code: it either works with the end goal, or it doesn't.
This speed means that any feedback you receive
is obtained quickly, and you can tweak any issues that appear. As with
Continuous Integration, this leads to problems being identified and fixed more
quickly.
This has the distinct advantage of avoiding
the traditional bottleneck that arises in the development process, in which
developers were often left waiting, twiddling their thumbs, while the testing
team rooted out faults.
In terms of cost-efficiency, Continuous
Testing is right up there with reducing downtime costs for getting the most
bang for your buck.
It has become an especially prevalent method
recently, in the age of websites and automated mobile app testing.
The Best Way to Implement
Continuous Testing
The initial step of implementing Continuous
testing is to identify which software features are most crucial to your
audience. This requires research: knowing the complexities and obstacles that
face others on the market, and planning to address them outright, is extremely
important.
You can then work these features into your
initial test scripts, ready to tackle any code that makes it through the
Continuous Integration stage.
Then, get ready to implement ‘Shift Left
Testing' - essentially, being ready to test, test and test again, but all at an
earlier stage than you might have opted for before.
You'll need to run tests on real devices, as
in software manual testing, rather than relying solely
on virtual emulators. They just don't stack up to how a real human would act,
so your test results would be skewed from the start.
Source
Utilizing the technology we have available
will also make life easier for you in the DevOps process. Programs like Jira
allow you to keep track of issues, bugs, and updates, as well as which team
member is dealing with them.
Meanwhile, Continuous Integration tools like
Jenkins and Bamboo can help to streamline your project from the get-go,
allowing developers to build, test and deploy their codes all on one platform.
Whether you're looking to speed up your
development process or just make the most of your talented development team,
Continuous Testing could be a key step on your way to a streamlined DevOps
project.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Felix
Zoot Billson - Head of Marketing, Global App Testing

Felix Zoot Billson is the Head of Marketing
for Global App Testing, a best-in-class continuous testing company that is founded on
speed, impact and effort. Felix has become adept at growing businesses by
focusing on creating optimized customer experiences to maximize business impact
and revenue. On the weekends, you'll find him reading his favorite novels and
mountain biking. Here is his LinkedIn.