Best Practices for Performing Continuous Testing

With clients expecting to have quality deliverables at  a faster rate and lower cost, the software industry has moved towards agile methodology and continuous integration/delivery. To cope with clients' expectations, the testing industry has been transforming itself into a more dynamic role. This is where Continuous Testing can deliver a product with superior quality and reduced business risks. Continuous Testing is a testing methodology which helps achieve continuous quality and improvement. To achieve the best results with the continuous testing process, follow the industry proven process. Here we discuss various aspects for performing continuous testing successfully.

How to Conduct Continuous Testing

After the code is uploaded onto the source code platform, it undergoes testing with the help of test codes which is just test automation. Here, even a minor change in code requires testing to reduce business risk. Whenever a source code change is made or a check-in happens, code is then built and tests are run to make sure it's ready to move on in production. The below diagram explains the continuous testing flow. 

Components of Continuous Testing

Three key components for continuous testing:

1. Test Automation: Ideally, continuous testing has executes tests without manual intervention. This is the goal of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. This can be achieved with test automation, as manual testing feedback is not instant.

2. Continuous Integration: Early code integration from different developers is another key component. Delayed integration will introduce bugs late in the cycle.

3. Continuous Delivery: Continuous Delivery means moving code in production at any time. This can be achieved only by continuously testing code.

• Continuous testing achieves a flawless user experience. Applications need extraordinary connectivity and dependence between processes, systems, and infrastructure. One key challenge while testing complex applications is delivering quickly with quality standards.
• Continuous delivery is the next-gen software delivery model. Continuous Testing plays a crucial role in Continuous Delivery. It uses agile development for testing; hence this offers a more efficient testing process. Continuous Testing requires an automated end-to-end testing suite. The suite must be integrated into existing development processes enabling continuity throughout SDLC.

Accomplishing Successful Continuous Testing

Points to consider for successful Continues Testing

• Continuous testing requires a stable environment with valid test data for each test run.
• To make Continuous testing effective, you must have appropriate DevOps tools and resources.
• Instead of waiting for a stable build, accelerate the test execution time by running performance testing in parallel.
• To reduce false positives and to test more efficiently, use API instead of GUI testing. APIs must be tested using service virtualization.
• Shift Left is needed to get instant feedback at the start of the project.
• Performing automation tests doesn’t necessarily indicate the readiness to perform Continuous testing. CT demands skilled resources and tools.
• Test suites must be organized so they aren't executed at once, but instead ran at different points of the build pipeline.

About Author

B.Naga Soundarya works as a Senior Test Engineer with V-Soft Digital and has more than 6 + years of IT experience in Software Testing. She is skilled in manual, Functional, Smoke, Regression, Sanity and Automation testing using Selenium Web Driver. She has sound knowledge in Mobile automation testing (Android & iOS) using Appium, TestNG, Maven, GitHub, GitLab and Jenkins.