The IT industry is gradually shifting to automation, with the DevOps testing approach emerging as the next big thing. When test automation is integrated into your software project life cycle, the advantages are enormous.
Using automated testing tools to verify the functionality of your product or system prior to its release onto the market is known as test automation in the DevOps context. It makes continuous delivery and integration (CI/CD) pipelines run more quickly and smoothly, requiring less manual testing.
This procedure is crucial because it produces high-quality software while saving time and money. We go into greater detail about test automation and DevOps in this blog.
What is Automated Testing?
Software is tested automatically through the use of automated tools and scripts. It contributes significantly to the software development cycle by increasing the efficiency, dependability, and speed of your program.
Compared to manual testing, automation testing can cover a larger range of scenarios because it can be carried out more quickly and in a variety of contexts. Using testing automation tools reduces the likelihood of missing bugs or code problems.
Regression testing, which rechecks past functionality to make sure new code changes do not disrupt current features, is an area where test automation shines. This guarantees the release of stable code into production.
In order to achieve the fundamental ideas of DevOps, which center around cooperation and coordination and guarantee that every stage of the software development cycle is in line with the process of updating or changing, test automation is crucial.
Continuous integration (CI), in which code changes are incorporated into a designated common repository, is anchored by test automation. In order to maintain code quality, automated tests are run on each integration in this scenario to find faults fast and make sure the added code doesn’t generate mistakes or regression.
Test automation in the continuous delivery (CD) pipeline verifies the functionality, performance, and security of the application. This guarantees that your program is constantly ready for deployment. Before promoting your code to production, you must make sure it is error-free.
Teams can resolve problems early on thanks to test automation. This is consistent with the “shift left” testing philosophy of DevOps, which advocates testing earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
Because DevOps encourages scalability and can handle higher workloads, automated tests may effortlessly cover a greater number of test cases, guaranteeing software quality across various settings. Reliability of test data and test results following test procedures is what you would like.
Benefits of Including Test Automation in DevOps
When test automation is successfully integrated into a DevOps environment, it may leverage many of the principles and practices of the latter.
The benefits are as follows:
Continuous Integration: Test automation makes sure that the least amount of time is spent on testing and validates code changes.
Continuous Delivery: To make sure that code satisfies the required quality standards, automated tests are crucial to CD pipelines.
Continuous input: You can make adjustments or modifications at any point in the development process thanks to the automated tests’ ongoing input on the code’s stability.
Consistency: When compared to manual testing procedures, test automation yields consistent results.
Better Teamwork: To deliver high-quality software, test automation promotes teamwork between the development and testing teams.
Saving Money: One of the long-term advantages of automated testing is cost savings. Reduced manual testing procedures and the deployment of high-quality software are the reasons behind this.
Error Reduction: Automated testing aids in the reduction of human error, which is frequently connected to manual testing.
Obstacles & Difficulties
While there are many advantages to test automation in a DevOps setting, nothing is perfect. It presents a good number of difficulties and dangers.
The following are some typical difficulties and dangers that you should be mindful of:
Absence of Planning and a Defined Strategy: Automation efforts and direction may be impacted by the absence of a defined plan for test automation.
Incorrect Test Cases: Automating incorrect test cases will produce unfavorable outcomes. Concentrate on significant cases.
Tool Selection: Test progress may be impacted by selecting the incorrect test automation tools.
Lack of Collaboration: Although the core of DevOps is teamwork, the development team may operate independently, which can have a detrimental impact on automated operations.
Configuring the test environment incorrectly can produce untrustworthy test results.
Lack of Training and Skills: Adequate knowledge is necessary for test automation. Make sure you possess the knowledge and experience needed to oversee automated tests.
Resisting Changes: Continuous development methods may be impacted by stakeholders’ or your own resistance to adopting automation techniques.
Selecting Appropriate Test Automation Tools
To obtain the intended and efficient testing results, it is critical to choose the appropriate test automation solution and technologies for your DevOps environment.
When selecting test automation tools, keep the following aspects in mind:
Technology Stack Compatibility: Verify that the test automation tools you use work with the technology stack of your application. This could include databases, third parties or APIs, and your favorite programming languages.
Scalability: A rise in workload is unavoidable. As a result, you need to select tools that can keep up with your software’s increasing requirements. Additionally, it needs to facilitate resource scaling, which is a crucial component of DevOps procedures.
Test Script Language: You need to take into account the language of programming that was used to create the test scripts. The group needs to know how to use the language.
Integration Capabilities: Assess the tool’s compatibility with a DevOps toolchain integration. To ensure a seamless automation process, it should interface with tracking tools or CI/CD pipelines.
Community and Support: For help and advice, pick a tool that offers forums and customer support.
Security and Compliance: You might create software that contains sensitive information in the future. Select a tool that complies with security and requirements in this situation.
Reputation: Popular and well-regarded research instruments. You will receive superior services as a result, along with prompt support.
To function in a DevOps environment, test automation engineers in the teams need a variety of skill sets that include both technical and non-technical aptitudes. To seamlessly include automated testing into the DevOps pipeline, you’ll need these abilities.
The following abilities are necessary for test automation engineers to succeed in a DevOps setting:
Programming Languages: You need to be proficient in languages like JavaScript, Python, Java, or C#, which are used for automated testing, in order to develop efficient automation scripts.
Tools for Test Automation: JUnit, Selenium, and Cypress are examples of tools for test automation in testing procedures. You need to know how to use one or two well.
Writing and designing test scripts that can cover your test scenarios is a skill you must acquire.
Validating API endpoints requires an understanding of API testing ideas, tools, and procedures.
Setup of the Test Environment: Become familiar with Docker Kubernetes and other containerization technologies. They help to make test environment management easier.
Communication: To be successful in a DevOps setting, you should possess great communication abilities.
Keeping Manual and Automated Testing in Balance
Notwithstanding the growing trend and requirement for test automation, manual testing is still essential to the software development process. Even while automation works well for repetitive and regression testing, Testing in manual testing should not be disregarded.
Exploratory testing, in which testers apply their expertise to find mistakes, is supported by manual testing. When you want to evaluate the user experience and make sure your program produces the intended results, it is useful for usability testing.
Additionally, Manual testing in software testing can streamline your testing procedures, particularly if you’re attempting to gauge how well users perceive their performance.
Testing, both automated and manual, is critical to the software life cycle. Therefore, you need to use a risk-based strategy to discover the ideal balance. This means that while you use manual testing resources for exploratory and usability testing, you should select essential areas for automation to get fast feedback. In the end, you need to know how to apply both manual and automated testing while coordinating them with the DevOps environment.
