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Creating, executing, and maintaining reliable tests has never been easier.
75% of software development teams accelerated deployment frequency in the past year, continuing a significant trend confirmed by mabl’s Testing in DevOps Report. In order to stay competitive and meet the needs of the digital-first consumer, B2B and B2C brands are focused on delivering new innovations to market at a faster pace.
One of the strongest indicators of a team’s ability to innovate faster was test coverage. Development organizations with high test coverage consistently outperformed their low test coverage peers when it came to improvements in product velocity.
For some, the impact of software testing on product velocity may come as a surprise. Quality assurance has traditionally acted as a gatekeeper in the Waterfall model, where the bulk of testing was performed in a siloed stage right before code was deployed into production. As organizations adopted agile and DevOps, that model resulted in persistent bottlenecks. But quality engineering, an emerging discipline that integrates test automation into development pipelines and reserves manual testing for higher impact quality needs, is transforming QA from gatekeeper to enabler. The Testing in DevOps Report revealed what software testing practices are differentiating high velocity teams from their competitors.
Adopting DevOps With Confidence
When implemented successfully, quality engineering enables development teams to adopt DevOps with confidence. But doing so requires implementing best practices that enable entire organizations to integrate software testing deeply into development pipelines, quickly collaborate on bug resolution, and increase test coverage.
EMBRACE CONTINUOUS TESTING
Continuous testing integrates automated testing into development pipelines. The Testing in DevOps Report revealed that a growing share of defects are being found earlier in the software development life cycle, when it’s faster, easier, and cheaper to resolve them. Without continuous testing, engineers may quickly introduce new features thinking they’re adding value to the product, but they may also be unintentionally introducing defects.
Test automation helps developers and quality engineering teams overcome this friction by lowering the barriers to testing. The Testing in DevOps Report revealed that quality (and customer happiness) leaders have started testing as early as the code stage of development with automated end-to-end tests that are triggered when a developer saves their work. Quality engineering teams are considered equal stakeholders in the development cycle, shifting to a strategic role that informs how best to ensure quality as delivery cycles accelerate.
BETTER SOFTWARE TESTING PROCESSES IMPROVE COLLABORATION
It’s a common complaint across the software industry: 44% of engineers say that finding and fixing bugs is their biggest pain point, and 52% saying they’d rather use the time spent on fixes to build new features. The Testing in DevOps Report found that teams with high test coverage are 3 times more likely to resolve a defect within 24 hours of discovery, time savings that can quickly add up to weeks of valuable engineering hours. Continuous testing is a critical part of streamlining the defect resolution process, but it cannot be the only quality engineering practice incorporated into development processes.
When it comes to rectifying high-priority bugs, speed and clear communication are critical. The longer a development team spends trying to collect all diagnostic data needed to replicate an issue, the longer it takes to uncover why a test failed. Longer term, an inefficient communication process degrades the trust between software testers and developers as developers begin to associate QA with frustration and negative feedback. Sharing test results directly in popular collaboration tools like Jira, Slack or Microsoft Teams makes it easy to surface test results to the right people and teams. Quality engineers can filter and fine-tune the information sent to specific channels in order to strike the perfect balance between keeping people in the loop and avoiding notification overload.
Delivering Value to Customers, Not Defects
Software testing plays a critical role in enabling development organizations to deliver more value to their customers at a faster pace. Continuous testing and improved collaboration ensure that quality assurance professionals and developers can identify and resolve defects at the speed of DevOps.
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