How Continuous Testing is Powerful for Reliable Software Development

Software delivery has been more demanding than ever in today’s modern world. Thus, agile and DevOps were conceived. These processes cut time in the process by breaking down IT silos and automating repetitive processes. Continuous testing allows teams to focus on the code they’re making, instead of making late fixes.

However, DevOps can be difficult to implement internally. Many organizations are turning to managed service providers to provide the tools need to take the leap. MSPs can bring testing tools and other continuous delivery solutions.

Legacy testing methods have held back continuous delivery as they are often the culprit of delays in continuous delivery pipelines. It’s the final requirement of a release, and traditional methods can hinder development speed.

Eliminating the testing bottleneck in the software development pipeline should be a priority for most teams. Not only does it improve release speeds, but it also leads to poor security. Continuous testing offers a solution to this major time constraint.

The main purpose of continuous testing is to integrate testing into the entire pipeline, from planning to operations, which saves a tremendous amount of time. It also increases product quality, as teams will know what to look for during the development process. Another key feature of continuous testing is that the solutions often integrate data analytics to create the most realistic testing environment possible. Improving how you test will improve the entire development process.

Saving Time

Traditional testing methods are often viewed as a necessary obstacle for software releases. This shouldn’t be the case, and continuous testing recognizes this. By doing testing earlier, problems will be easier to fix, as the code won’t be integral to the software itself.

Many continuous testing solutions offer customizable dashboards and alerts that let you decide what the testing should be looking out for regarding your specific needs. Instead of waiting until the end of the development pipeline to learn if a line of code written at the start is defective, your team will know immediately that the code is poor quality. Scrambling to implement fixes will be a thing of the past.

Improving Quality

One thing that each development team should strive for is knowledge of the code they’re developing. Continuous testing allows teams to see exactly what’s going wrong as the software is being developed. Furthermore, finding security flaws will be easier. By integrating the testing phase into real-time development, teams will be able to understand everything about the code they’re developing.

If a team needs to update something in the code post-release, it won’t be an obstacle to figure out what processes will be impacted. Instead, continuous testing will be able to find the problem quickly and quality will never be in question.

Realistic Testing Environments

It wouldn’t make much sense for a testing procedure to be artificial. Any test should imitate a real-world scenario to get the best results. For example, it is possible to utilize real user behaviors to map how a test should operate. We’ve mentioned how helpful analytics can be in any technology field before, utilizing these tools for a realistic testing environment is what makes continuous testing so useful in improving quality and speed.

Standardization is a crucial benefit to continuous testing. Traditional testing can leave teams scrambling at the end of the pipeline because many teams are contributing to software development. People are working on file management systems, databases, etc. Aligning all of this code can be difficult. A standardized testing environment allows software releases to be more efficient. It also allows different teams to work more collaboratively.

Improved Security

Security is one of DevOps greatest flaws. Security is often tacked on at the end of the development pipeline. This isn’t the right approach. The development pipeline needs continuous testing to ensure proper security.

Now, this can’t be the only security method in the development pipeline. Testing and security slow down a release, but unsecure software is bad software. Integrating testing throughout development enforces safe software. DevSecOps is the right approach to developing a proper development culture.