The Changing Role of Testing in DevOps

Testing is as vital as ever, thanks to DevOps, but that’s an obvious to any skilled software leader, right?

But, who does your software testing? And how is it done? – Because the process has changed.

The role and skills required by testers are evolving, thanks to the testing that’s involved in DevOps. Testers now need to be involved from the get-go – as they play a vital role in gathering the requirements needed to analyse code.

…Which is why it is so important for testers, to be included as a part of the team.

The focus shifts from testing alone – to working as a part of a team – in order to guarantee quality is built into the software development process. With DevOps, testing becomes everyone’s responsibility.

“With DevOps, testing becomes everyone’s responsibility.”

Automation is a Must

It’s a challenge, completing all of the testing within the typical two-week sprint cycle without automation, (a must, for a successful sprint cycle.)

If testers are traditionally engaged in the second week of the sprint cycle, testing would not be completed by the end of the sprint.

DevOps calls for a higher level of integration between the various stakeholders: From the process of writing the code, to the testing of it and the code deployment itself. The emphasis is on the use of continuous integration and automated testing tools.

DevOps blurs the boundaries between the roles of the different contributors in the chain, mandating that everyone has to contribute across the entire software development lifecycle.

As a result, the QA engineers can develop automation frameworks and configure automation test cases, at any given point.

Quality Cannot be Tested

You can’t test quality, it has to be built in from the start of the software development process.

In the last decade or so, testing and testers have made a special place for themselves, after the development stage of the assembly line.

Today, testers have to possess more than just ‘good skills’.

They need to become technically adept, through learning the basics of coding themselves – so that they can then collaborate with developers. Testers should also elevate their skills in order to become automation experts.

Conclusion

The key to your successful DevOps team is not in embedding testers at one point in the software development chain – but embedding them along the entire product development process. In DevOps, quality is everyone’s job.

What do you think? Are testers a true part of your software development team?