Why Businesses Must Not Miss Out on Continuous Testing?

While Digitization of services is definitely adding value for businesses, it is also equally intensifying the need for constant vigilance and software testing. The concept of Continuous Testing has emerged from the need to introduce software testing right at the beginning of the software development cycle, and to keep the software updated for frequent releases. Most importantly, enterprises enable the idea of testing and quality right from the beginning instead of delivering it as an after-thought.

Businesses are sensing the impact of reaching faster to the market and catching up with the consumer demands. Continuous Testing helps businesses deliver faster and also ensures quality. It entails a process to execute automated tests as a part of the software delivery pipeline to collate the required feedback on the business risks from the application or software.

Ensuring quality with speed is critical for businesses today, and Continuous Testing enables the process. One of the key highlights of the approach is that Testing begins right from the beginning of the development cycle.

Applications are getting complex and are being upgraded in real-time without incurring any downtime, to avoid any disruption in consumer experience. This makes the overall application development and maintenance process absolutely tricky. Continuous Testing enables and empowers teams to roll out applications and application updates in real-time with confidence.

In addition, new and emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, BlockChain, Augmented / Virtual Reality (AR & VR), and IoT are changing the overall software development scenario. While speed is key, ensuring the right consumer experience is business-critical. Hence, businesses need to check their delivery constantly for confirming seamless launches. One small glitch can bring down the product and brand’s reputation.

Continuous Testing and Continuous Integration go hand-in-hand to ensure that code development is faster and seamless. Nevertheless, there are some key benefits of Continuous Testing that cannot be missed out.

• Continuous Testing helps to reduce application-bound risks

Faster turnaround time is definitely a key benefit expected from Continuous Testing; but ensuring a risk-free output is equally important. Whenever the code undergoes changes, there is a good amount of scope for errors. This can lead to a serious impact on the application or software and increase costs while rectifying it towards the end of the development process.

By implementing Continuous Testing, the error can be detected way ahead in the development cycle and measures can be taken. This helps to reduce the ultimate risks post the application lands in the hands of the user. Moreover, potential issues are tackled in time and probability of risks goes down.

• Continuous Testing helps to bring consistency

Continuous Testing is made effective with Test Automation, which helps in keeping consistency with the testing process. It helps to keep every system and sub-system on a seamless flow with continuous integration. This helps in providing a configured environment that is robust, and helps sustain the required configuration for similar tests.

• Continuous Testing enables faster releases

Continuous Testing and Continuous Integration are implemented to enable faster and frequent releases. When tests are automated, the code is tested rigorously and constantly, enabling the development teams to deliver assured results even at speed. With Continuous Testing, teams are able to release cleaner code on a consistent basis, at speed.

• Continuous Testing helps improve Test Coverage

Do you need more test coverage for your code? Continuous Testing helps you to achieve more test coverage, as the tests are automated and implemented right from the beginning of the development process. This helps in ensuring that any potential errors are covered and all the features are assessed. Maximum Test Coverage is definitely a great relief for the testing and development folks.

• Continuous Testing enables more transparency

Considering that testing is constantly done and right from the beginning; it enables more visibility for the testers as well as the developers. It adds value to the overall software/application development process. Moreover, the test automation tool enables meticulous reporting across the dashboard, which enhances transparency of the process. Eventually, the team is kept abreast on every error, success, and failure of the tests.

Continuous Testing is integral to the DevOps process, where it is important that teams work in tandem and are made responsible for ensuring quality. Transparency facilitates great collaboration in the Continuous Testing process.

• Continuous Testing cuts down time taken for Code Review

Continuous Testing enables rapid feedback, and encourages more collaboration between the testing and developments teams. In this way, your Continuous Integration and Version Control System can interact and decide when to initiate a merge request. The system evaluates when the tests pass successfully and related requirements are met. This helps in drastically reducing the time taken for Code Review.

In Conclusion

Continuous Testing has been endorsed by teams to enable faster releases and save massive testing costs. In the DevOps world, Continuous Testing and Continuous Integration play a major role, as it helps prevent integration problems. It helps to check for bugs early in the testing process and cuts down time and costs over the lifespan of the project.

Most importantly, this avoids last-minute chaos when the release is expected and helps to commit to the code frequently. Hence, from a business perspective Continuous Testing makes total sense, as it adds value to the business outcomes, gets products faster to the market, detects issues way ahead in the development cycle, and encourages more collaboration within the team. This brings more agility to deliver anytime and offer better solutions to the customers.

Continuous testing acts as the key driver for DevOps initiatives to yield desired outcomes. Cigniti’s Continuous Integration (CI) testing experts boast of a rich experience and can configure and execute popular CI tools such as Agile GO, Cruise Control, Chef, Puppet, Microsoft TFS, Jenkins, Bamboo, Hudson and so on, helping client’s DevOps teams.

Connect with our experts and check out Cigniti’s DevOps Test Center of Excellence that extends a host of services.