What is continuous testing?
Continuous testing is the process of testing your application at every stage of the software development process and every time that changes are made to application code or configurations. Business agility requires organizations to shorten release cycles and frequently deliver new features and fixes. Continuous testing integrates testing in every stage of the software delivery pipeline to catch bugs early and maintain software quality. Software tests are maintained as code alongside the application code and frequently run as part of the continuous testing paradigm.
What is continuous testing in production?
With continuous testing in production (CTIP), you can automate code checks in the production environment. Some bugs might not be detected during earlier software development stages but appear when users interact with the application in real time. You can apply software test tools and scripts to automate the detection of issues and allow prompt remedial work. Although CTIP is helpful in detecting latent software issues in the production environment, it doesn’t replace other software tests performed during development.
How does continuous testing relate to continuous integration and continuous delivery?
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) is a DevOps practice that balances quality and speed when you’re delivering software releases to end users. When developing or updating an application, several developers might make changes in their respective code branches. Each branch contains a modified version of the original code. The developers must merge these branches into a shared repository without any code conflicts.
With continuous integration (CI), you can automate code merging from various branches. Continuous delivery (CD) automatically prepares a functional version of the application that you can deploy at any time to end users. CI and CD together streamline efforts to deliver new software, making incremental code changes faster and more efficient.
Read about continuous integration
Continuous testing in CI/CD
Continuous testing in DevOps is an essential principle that drives the entire CI/CD pipeline. Software teams can shift left, or move the testing process alongside development. Instead of leaving testing until a later stage, you run automated tests at every opportunity in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). You use automated testing tools to inspect code, run test scripts, and uncover valuable insights to improve software quality.
Continuous testing tools automatically perform functional, code quality, and unit tests during the CI process as you make changes to your code. These tools automate large-scale tests—including regression, integration, and load tests—in the CD pipeline to further minimize business risks.
The following diagram shows an example of a CI/CD pipeline in mainframe DevOps.
What are the benefits of continuous testing?
You can experience the following benefits when you integrate continuous testing tools in the modern application development cycle.
Accelerate software development
With the continuous testing process, you can speed up your development time and effort with automated test tools. Conventionally, software development follows the waterfall model, where developers complete a specific stage before moving to the next one. With modern software development practices such as Agile and DevOps, you can be more flexible in your approach. Coupled with continuous testing, you can test and apply fixes as you code instead of waiting for feedback from QA engineers. This means that you can shorten time to market and be more responsive to feature requests.
Reduce costs
Software bugs and performance issues affect service delivery, which can make organizations lose business opportunities and incur substantial costs. Despite your best efforts, you might not uncover all software issues before deployment. You can use continuous testing tools to assess, monitor, and report problems throughout the entire SDLC. You can reduce remediation expenses and resources by discovering software issues earlier in the development pipeline. Fixing bugs earlier is less expensive than in a production environment.
Improve code quality
When building software, you strive to adhere to coding best practices. Well-structured source code is easily understandable, contains fewer bugs, and consumes fewer computing resources. With continuous testing, you can maintain code consistency throughout your different projects. You can also reuse code more confidently when it’s rigorously tested for bugs, functionality, and performance issues.
Improve team collaboration
Continuous testing plays an important role in providing visibility into software tests conducted throughout the development stages. Instead of operating in silos, the development, QA, and operational teams take a more proactive approach to discovering software bugs in test environments. When you’re integrated into CI/CD, you can test different software modules and communicate results simultaneously. For example, several developers might test new features concurrently while operation teams are evaluating if existing cloud infrastructure can support changing requirements.
Elevate customer experience
You can anticipate possible issues and plan your responses when you release new software changes with robust testing strategies. Instead of dampening customer expectations with a flawed release, you can use continuous testing frameworks to simulate possible scenarios and anticipate potential issues. You can address issues detected from the test before you release the software into the production environment. This means that you can deliver engaging software experiences consistently.
What are continuous testing methodologies?
Continuous testing involves numerous tests that you can use to produce secure, user-friendly, and functional applications. The following are several common test methods.
Functional testing
With functional testing, you can align software workflow with the business requirements that they're architected after. For example, an ecommerce software alerts the shipping company for every order that it receives. In functional testing, you can ensure that the software sends the right API call to the shipping vendor's system.
Regression testing
Regression testing ensures that your code changes don’t affect the application's stability, performance, security, and functionality. The test ensures consistent software behavior as you introduce rapid code changes in modern software environments.
Performance testing
With performance testing, you can assess nonfunctional aspects of an application. During a performance test, you assess the application's capability to function optimally despite increasing web traffic, memory consumption, concurrent users, and other environment parameters. You can use the test's actionable insights to identify bottlenecks and optimize code workflows.
Integration testing
With integration testing, you can ensure that third-party software components and dependencies are behaving as expected in the application. For example, an API call should return an appropriate response as specified in the documentation. You can perform integration testing to ensure that all dependencies work seamlessly when they’re brought together.
User acceptance testing
User acceptance testing is commonly performed on custom software that is designed for specific users. Take the example of building a customer relationship management (CRM) software application for a client in the retail industry. You conduct user acceptance testing to validate that all requirements and features are designed as described in the software requirement specification. Based on the user feedback, you might revise the software or sign off to complete the delivery.
Smoke testing
Smoke testing is a software test automation that QA engineers perform when they receive a new build from developers. QA teams use smoke tests (also known as build verification tests) to ensure that key functions in the software don’t have any major flaws. If they do, the QA team informs developers of the discovered issues and waits for a rework before they proceed with further testing.
What are the challenges of continuous testing?
Despite the benefits of continuous testing, you might face challenges when you implement it at scale for the following reasons:
- You’re accustomed to conventional testing and test data management practices, which don’t prioritize testing in the early stages of development.
- You need better access to automated testing tools that you can easily integrate with existing development workflows.
- You limit your continuous testing to automating software tests, which reduces its positive effect. Instead, you must apply continuous testing as part of a broader strategy, such as DevOps and Agile, to deliver functional software that improves the user experience.
Incorporating continuous testing requires a mindset and cultural shift that starts from the top leadership.
How can AWS help with your continuous testing requirements?
With Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can scale your development efforts with automated testing tools in the CI/CD pipeline. You can use the continuous testing tools that AWS provides to build functional, consistent, and user-friendly modern applications. For example, you can:
- Use AWS CodeBuild to automate tests when compiling source codes into ready-to-deploy software packages. CodeBuild integrates with your existing CI/CD pipeline so that you can detect bugs when they’re easier to catch.
- Use AWS CodePipeline to catch bugs when you’re releasing iterative software changes in the test or production environment. With CodePipeline, you can model deployment workflows in a pipeline that integrates with AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeDeploy, and AWS CloudFormation.
Get started with continuous testing on AWS by creating an account today.
Next Steps on AWS
