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Software developers often face problems associated with cost, technology and time to market when it comes to providing solutions to the clients. Most prominent problems are:

• High software development cost
• Inability to meet the delivery time
• Improper testing which may lead to loss of business
• Inability to deliver standard quality software

All of these issues can be eliminated with shift left testing. In shift left testing, main focus shifts on quality and testing starts right from the inception of a project. As per the conventional models, testing begins when the development is in coding phase, thus leaving room for errors to be discovered at a later stage of testing.

Download Whitepaper: Combination of Shift left and Shift right in DevOps

As the shift left model mainly focuses on quality and is implemented from day one, the probability of identifying the errors is much more and so is their timely remedy. Additionally, shift left model mainly encompasses the inception phase, thus making it much easier to fix the errors at minimal cost. Following are some of the major benefits of shift left testing.

• Increased test coverage
• Saving resources and time
• Timely delivery of software
• Bugs are detected and rectified early
• Enhanced team bonding between developers and testers

Simply put, shift left testing provides solution to issues related to cost, time and quality.

Best practices

• Developers to take up some elements of testing: As the customer-driven development models have become more important in software development field, test automation is becoming more important. Normally, development teams have more developers compared to testers. That being said, developers should take some responsibility for the test automation efforts to expedite the entire process. BDD (behavior driven development) is a useful way to persuade developers to begin creating tests and bridging the gap between testers and developers.One way to introduce developers to test scenarios is where testers use customer-focused vocabulary to create test scenarios, which developer scan then implement in codes to automate them.
• Test automation code reviews: It’s difficult to find testers who have the required knowledge to develop reusable and maintainable code. However, for test automation code reviews, testers should know how to perform quality checks to see the codes are reviewed correctly and ensure that the developers haven’t missed scenarios that should have been examined. Though testers can be given the task of code quality review checks, it’s wise to let the developers build automation frameworks rather than burdening testers with it. This way, you can provide the testers with more time to devote on finding bugs instead of creating a framework. Just as developers should share some testing responsibilities with testers as mentioned before, testers too can take up a few developer tasks like test automation code reviews. When testers have the required domain knowledge together with a holistic understanding of system and the company’s methodology, they’ll have better understanding of the areas where defects can be found.
• Focus on teaching testers to code: Just as you can’t teach or train a developer to perform all functions of a tester, the vice versa is also true. Yet, for reviewing codes efficiently, testers should learn how to code. Thus, the focus should be on teaching them how to read and modify codes and become technically proficient in it at some level. An example could be the tester’s knowledge and ability of altering an automated test.
• Using proper test tools: Testers often experience issues related to inability to develop automated tests utilizing the tools that are being used by the developers. It acts as a barrier between developers and testers when it comes to adhering to some object-oriented, common design principles. Nowadays, many renowned test tool vendors are supporting languages like C# and Java. Many of them also hold the ability to blend with source control software and developer IDEs. In an ideal test automation scenario, tools that fit into the developers’ ecosystem should be used.
•  Team effort and collaboration: Successful delivery of a product is the outcome of a complete team effort. Testability has to be there in the mind of developers from the inception of a project. That being said, developers should plan the solution with automation of an element before its code is written. When developers become responsible for most of the test automation framework development, they’ll become more conscious of the issues that can trigger undependable tests because of bad testability code design. The team can be truly successful only when testability becomes the core focus right from the beginning.

Final Words

A seamless implementation of shift left testing identifies errors early in the SDLC process, decreases risks and reduces cost of rework, all of which have great significance in the development process. Adoption of shift left approach helps organizations to move toward a faster, more predictive and preventive approach to testing which can be implemented across any methodology.

Download Whitepaper: Test Data Management – Key Challenges and Test Approach

Companies can leverage the shift left approach to propel their organization towards a quicker, more predictive and preventive approach to testing,Contact Our Digital testing experts for a free assessment. – It functions remarkably well in agile environments, but can be applied equally well across any other methodology as well.

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