Challenges in Automating DevOps Testing

The need for QA and security are rising with the increased rate of cyber breaches every year. To cope with the emerging demand for faster security, the IT experts joined heads and brought forward innovations like Agile Development and DevOps. Both of these terms run over the concept of cross-functional teamwork and exchange of ideas staying on the same table.

DevOps influence the developers, operations, and testers to work together on a software development cycle. With the ultimate teamwork, the product gets delivered quickly with quality.

It is quite obvious that DevOps has modified QA and testing environment to make it more efficient according to today’s needs. The “working together” concept focuses on pre-planning and the need for speedy delivery and this is when automating DevOps comes in play – and it does get quite challenging for the team involved to execute flawlessly!

Quali’s 2016 survey on the challenges that occur when implementing DevOps states that 13% of the participants felt that implementing test automation can pose an obstacle to successful DevOps implementation.

Read on below to understand what changes create challenges in automating the testing process for DevOps:

Ø The Next-Generation Testing Team

DevOps preaches the idea that cross-dependence and acceptance of inputs from teams involved are the only criteria to achieve better results. But previewing ideas theoretically is not a solution to amplify testing cycles. On the other side, logical processing and planning of the whole process can even bring the company’s stakeholders to indulge in the real corporate talk.

Targeting the end-users and defining the objectives could be a good step, but knowing the impact of one’s requirement on another team involved and iteration of cross-dependencies remains a significant phase throughout the testing processes.

In order to stand with the next-gen’s testing teams, QA team needs to intensify the ways they address and correspond towards the fulfilling demands of a software development project.

Eventually, automating the work processes correctly can help in executing the smooth running of the DevOps testing process.

Ø Maintaining QA – no longer a tester’s job alone!

QA should not be dedicated only to QA teams alone. In order to automate the entire development cycle, every developer and operations manager should take care of QA besides their primary duties. Because it would be time-consuming if a QA tester detects ample errors by the end of the test cycle.

For this reason, the whole IT team should be responsible for keeping up with the product’ quality to ensure quick and continuous delivery.

Ø Covering Every Test at every Step

DevOps emphasizes on the greater and ideal integration of pre-scripted plans with an identified pace of change. For rapid delivery, testers focus on tracing and covering every testing step on “earlier the better” basis.

To avoid the mayhem, traceability matrix works as a magic wand that assures every step is tested and is not ignored. This way critical functions are not missed and automation becomes more convenient in DevOps testing.

Ø Frequent Builds need Frequent Verification

In DevOps, the team creates frequent builds that are casually prone to code-breaking various important aspects.

Testing, verification, and changing and repeat. This is all testers do use distinct techniques accordingly. Likewise, these builds can’t be tested manually and need a different way. For this reason, testers should automate the process to avoid any code breaking in between the test cycle.

Ø Intelligent Reporting and Collaboration

Providing unified and intelligent reports with actionable insights at the right time offer a great help to maintain harmony in the entire workflow. A tech team that reports each other about every new change in the interface could achieve agility in its very best form. Therefore, bad reporting is certainly a challenge in automating the DevOps testing, but right way reporting can save the team from cluttering.

Analytics and intelligence play a strategic role in implementing intelligent regression models as well as creating automation priorities throughout the work process. It is imperative to see what needs to be tested and then test only what’s the need of time without lingering it. Make sure that the automation architecture is easy to maintain and it is essential to have a central repository for preserving test cases for quicker traceability. Fundamental test practices are not essentially suitable for this level of reporting and analysis and this challenge does become over-welcoming.

• Selecting optimal Testing and Management Tools

When the technology is new, you can’t expect the traditional tools to get you the results. There are some testing tools that come in handy only once throughout, thus failing to serve the purpose of automating DevOps. Therefore, DevOps testing teams need those tools that offer them the help in making the process simpler and easier throughout its evolution.

DevOps process requires test automation tools that can effortlessly link user stories to respective test cases, render a complete requirement view, maintains testing results and test data for each test, provides REST API’s, helps in easier management of test cycles, and lastly, create and execute test cases real-time, as well as facilitating detailed reporting and analytics.

Testers are the backbone of any IT team. Especially those working in DevOps environment hold an even more critical place. They need to be able to more vigilant, quick in action and communication and continue to render their services in accelerating the automation process. Though, if these challenges are coped with a well-devised plan and the involvement of every team member as QA manager, there is no way that your DevOps Automation will fail