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Change is the only constant –this is an often repeated adage. It is equally applicable to the software development cycle. In today’s competitive market where everyone is short on time. Clients and customers are impatient to get results. It is important for business houses to be able to capitalize on opportunities and deliver innovative solutions and business systems to stay ahead. The latest in the field is the concept of Agile software development to implement the principle of continuous testing and delivery over the traditional process. This system is based on the concept of implementing testing into the development cycle. Testing involves validating the basic requirements of the product and how it meets the user’s needs including all the system requirement and the final associated business goals.

Automation and Continuous Integration (CI):
Lets look at some of the best practices

Ways in which continuous testing can be implemented

Now that we have established the need for software testing, it is equally important to understand how a software development firm can expedite continuous testing and make the process smooth. Subjectively speaking, continuous testing involves automated unit tests, control over the software version and the ability to integrate it with the server. There are testing software that help expedite the process. Some of the commonly used ones include Jenkins, CircleCI, HP LeanFT etc. All these have their own advantages and disadvantages and their use depends on specific system that needs to be tested.

Testing in the times of continuous integration and delivery

The focus these days is on speeding up things. The combination of Agile practices and continuous integration and delivery have reduced the development life cycle.Continuous integration, ensures that defectsare detected and resolved early on.  With continuous delivery, the whole process is taken a step further with the team constantly involved in updating and changing the system in conjunction with user feedback. In an ideal environment it reduces time and cost and minimizes risks.

Continuous testing is the key to continuous delivery. It needs to be automated so that the existing development processes are seamlessly integrated into the system while the processes that are redundant can be excluded. On the part of the development team, the following should be made a part of the continuous testing process:

Advantages and drawbacks of continuous testing

With Continuous testing process, we can automate the tests and integrate into the build process early in the cycle. The key benefits with this process include

• Early detection of defects as QA team is involved at very early stage in the project.
• Faster release cycles as entire process is automated.
• Code quality can be improved as every check-in build is tested
• Effective use of time.

The drawback of continuous testing is the time and money that is spent in setting up the system. The return on investment both time and money wise might not be beneficial to developers who make small apps meant for internal use. These kind of software development processes take about 2 weeks and every time an update is created the previous one is discarded. So, it probably does not make sense to install but with CI the time frame would increase.

Continuous testing aims at getting the same results each and every time the process is repeated. The concept of continuous testing has been a part of the development process since the 1990’s. The process has now evolved with growth in technology to suit the current requirements. The result is far quicker testing process without any compromise on quality.

How can TechArcis assist?

TechArcis has expertise in enabling independent testing services, and is far ahead of the curve in following the process of Continuous Integration.

We have developed new frameworks to deliver comprehensive and the best fit testing approach for many clients. At @TechArcis , we work to accelerate your entire Software Development Cycle with end-to-end testing ownership.

Contact us today to discuss about your testing needs.

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