The Critical Role QA Plays in DevOps Testing

DevOps methodology is used to reduce the development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with better quality. Quality Assurance plays a large role in the automation and efficiency of the DevOps process. To effectively deploy DevOps products, successful execution of DevOps testing is necessary.  

How to Start DevOps Testing and QA

Let's first understand the DevOps lifecycle. 

1. Planning
2. Developing (coding)
3. Building deployments in a QA environment
4. Testing the builds
5. Deploying builds into production environments

DevOps is about making the whole software delivery lifecycle seamless. DevOps Testing happens alongside software development and delivery. Quality Assurance (QA) activities aren't limited to functional testing, but should include testing operations, performance, basic security, etc.

The Changing Role of QA in DevOps 

Previously, QA would build and perform testing. In this practice, the build would be in the QA’s bucket for a couple of days before giving a sign-off. In the DevOps model, software testers become active participants and proactively perform continuous testing in all stages of development, like operations, performance and security.

When performing automation testing, the test automation tools we choose and the technologies we work with are important factors to consider. We must also consider the speed of delivery. To meet deadlines, we have to use effective tools.

Testing can be performed while the software is in production. By doing so, we can gather data/values and monitor for functionality changes. We can also track if there are any weak points in the functionality, such as application usage and number of users.

Remember the following points to successfully execute tests:

• QA must have a structured strategy in the DevOps cycle
• The QA team is responsible for making sure the testing environment is up to the team's standards
• All pre- and post-testing tasks must be automated and synchronized within the continuous integration cycle
• It's important to automate all testing tasks and arrange them in a designated order
• QA is responsible for designing a stable and up-to-date testing framework

Conclusion

QA needs to understand and infuse the software development and continuous improvement cycle with automation so that they add value to the development lifecycle and have enough scope to adapt changes.

About Author

Vinod Kumar works as a QA Lead at V-Soft Digital. He has 13 years of experience with more than 8 years of experience in various Performance and Other Testing projects in the Quality domain in the IT industry. He has worked on various platforms and was able to develop innovative solutions to optimize performance and deliver products with high quality. He is a certified professional in Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB) and Scrum Master (CSM). In addition to these, he is certified in Modern Project Management - Quality Risk, Procurement and Project Closure, BA from Udemy, RPA Business Analyst from UI Path and Six Sigma in Health Care.