The 6 Step Solution for achieving Continuous Testing with Automated Testing

Releasing software multiple times into production in a day to deploy the new features/fixes with high quality will need an automation testing setup in all the stages of your delivery pipeline. In DevOps, you have to automate as much as possible to enable continuous testing. So when a product is getting deployed into production more frequently, you have to test the product continuously. For you to proactively search for quality issues, continuous testing has to be enabled across all stages of your delivery pipeline. Since software Test Automation is the key enabler of Continuous Testing, we will be taking a look at the 6 steps that can help you achieve Continuous Testing.

Treating Test Code as Production Code

Whenever a change happens in the product, you have to update your test code to accommodate the change. Let’s say you have to make a change on a common page/screen, your test automation framework should enable you to update the change in that one place instead of updating all the scripts.

Implementing the best practices and design patterns in test automation ease script maintenance. So you have to design your framework in such a way that any script change can be added to the test suite quickly without any hassle.

Kick-off Test Execution for Every Code Commit

Every code commit to version control should kick off automated unit & acceptance tests. When you deliver fast, you will also be in need of quick feedback for the changes or fixes that you have made. Lack of code commit validations will lead to eventual quality issues and regression defects.

Test Automation Framework

You can’t just build the entire framework and immediately start the script creation for Continuous Testing. We have to use the Acceptance Test-Driven Automation (ATDA) approach to develop an automation testing framework. ATDA enables you to write automated test scripts from the very first day instead of waiting for the framework development phase to be completed.

In the past, automation testers used to spend at least two weeks, or even a month in certain cases to develop the test automation framework. The script development itself would begin only after that. So in order to achieve Continuous Testing, you have to start the script development from day one, and then go forward with the product development.

How can we develop scripts without a framework?

Let’s say your team is comfortable with Java. You can use JVM-Cucumber, Selenium, Maven, Appium, and IntelliJ Community edition to start writing automated test scripts from day one. If a script needs a new framework feature, you first have to develop the feature and complete the script. That is how you can evolve the framework and not hold up the script development during the framework development.

Avoid & remove Flaky Tests from CI

If an issue messes with the DevOps pipeline, the entire team should focus on the issue and fix it immediately. Similarly, if a script is flaky, it will make the pipeline unstable. Automation Testing Services is our core service, and we know for a fact that you’ll need a highly skilled team that follows the best practices and uses proper object locators to avoid flaky tests and achieve Continuous Testing.

So if some of your tests are flaky, you must quarantine, schedule, and run them separately, and bring them into the delivery pipeline only when it is fixed and stable.

Test Data Generation

Test data plays an important role in UI, Functional, Non-functional, and Integration Testing. So you have to park adequate test data for test execution. Make sure to avoid failures that can be caused by invalid or missing test data. You should also have an automated system that allocates the required test data and cleans up the consumed data during execution.

Setup the Tests for all the phases

Continuous Testing should be set up in all phases of your delivery pipeline starting from development to production. For example, if a feature is being actively used by the end-users on a daily basis for a particular period of time. You can write an automated test script to check the feature’s usage from the production monitoring data to proactively check for any quality issues. So make sure you don’t just focus on smoke and regression testing as you have to set up tests for different stages in the pipeline.

Conclusion

Being one of the best automation testing service providers, we, at Codoid, follow strict scripting practices and design patterns to avoid flaky tests and have helped many clients to enable Continuous Testing in their DevOps pipeline. Fast feedback is critical for DevOps. You also shouldn’t delay test code development. You have to add the test code as and when new features are deployed into the pipeline.