Software testers are continuously impacted by change — it comes with the job. New job skills are critical to keeping up with tools and changing role expectations. When organizations choose to move to a QAOps or DevOps approach, the testing team is significantly impacted.
Organizations may make this choice to streamline Agile processes and provide frequent, high-quality releases to customers. QAOps and DevOps condense Agile processes further to enhance collaboration and make job roles flexible, accomplishing more with the same development team resources. Tight collaboration between team members means fewer release delays, defects, and bugs falling between cracks.
DevOps and QAOps both involve developers, designers, software testers, and operations personnel, and share common objectives and goals. In the past, a release would be developed and tested. Operations team members then released the test build and were frequently left holding the bag when deployments failed or a surge of defects landed on customers. Next followed the hair-on-fire crisis mode of rapid defect fixing and subsequent releases with questionable stability.
Learn how DevOps and QAOps impact the software testing role, and get tips for building a collaborative team capable of producing high-quality applications with frequent releases.
DevOps is more than a set of tools for testing, development, and deployment. It’s a significant cultural shift for most Agile software development teams. DevOps’ emphasis is continuous code integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). Testing is present, but the team’s focus revolves around deployment and monitoring production post-release.
DevOps team characteristics include:
The entire team participates in coding, testing, and deploying a reliable release from start to finish. The shared ownership and accountability of all facets of software development can create a collaborative, productive team that delivers quality software continuously.
QAOps is DevOps, but it focuses on testing over deployment. The team’s purpose remains the same: to work collaboratively to deliver quality applications rapidly.
QAOps team characteristics include:
QAOps and DevOps are similar with a distinct difference on focus. DevOps focuses on deployment while QAOps focuses on quality and testing. Both require shared ownership and accountability for all facets of software development within a highly collaborative team.
Both DevOps and QAOps impact the roles and tasks of a QA testing team. QA testing is a multifaceted discipline, including understanding various techniques, methodologies, test development design, test management, processes, and tools. The goal of testing remains — to prevent and identify defects and ensure application quality.
QA testers need skills in coding, test automation development using AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) elements, UI/UX design principles, and data management. The tools used vary by organization, but testers must prepare to learn how to use them for testing, coding, data management, and deployment.
Software testers often play a pivotal role in executing CI/CD processes with continuous testing. Automated test development is vital, including the ability to analyze failures quickly and perform test maintenance over the SDLC. In some cases, QA testers may need to employ automation combined with rapid exploratory testing to ensure quality as features are developed.
Rapid testing skills are essential for short iterations and frequent deployments. A tester’s knowledge and skills must expand to include deep technical skills in root cause analysis, developing pipelines, maintaining automated scripts, and verifying UI/UX design principles.
For a competent QA tester, learning is continuous. Teams need to plan on ongoing learning for testing, coding, and tool usage. Additionally, teams need to support each other with on-the-job training and support. Testers don’t need to be experts in coding, data management, or deployment, but skills in each will go a long way when working in DevOps or QAOps teams.
The team needs to learn TDD or BDD for early test automation, and codeless test automation tools, including AI or ML, to shorten analysis and maintenance time. Testers must be proficient in various testing types, including:
In a team emphasizing a QAOps or devops approach, provide test feedback to the team early and often throughout the SDLC. Test environments must be standardized with automatic code deployments on a regular basis. Having inconsistent or unstable test data and test servers will derail release plans. Manage test environments and ensure version control, configuration management, and automated provisioning to save time and prevent testing bottlenecks due to test environment issues.
So, what does a DevOps or QAOps cycle look like? The essential tasks are defined below and cycle through continuously:
In the early days, most test automation tools used a record-and-playback function that created automated scripts based on testing steps. Problems occurred when tools couldn’t identify the right objects, or one slight change in the feature causes the script to fail. Testers spent considerable time editing scripts to keep them functional enough to identify major defects.
Test automation tools have evolved significantly. Teams define a test automation framework and often select a codeless or low-code tool. Tests are designed in cooperation with development and manual testing to ensure desired test coverage, scalability, and accuracy. Using codeless or low-code test automation tools also helps teams leverage AI and ML to speed up test maintenance and execution failure analysis. Teams that collaborate on test automation create tests that are useful over the application’s lifetime without requiring constant maintenance.
Continuous testing requires automation that scales and is editable. As application code changes, team members can edit scripts for breaking changes. The purpose is to create test suites that quickly identify defects and can be executed continuously throughout the SDLC.
Collaborative teams with shared responsibilities are the future. Nurturing and building collaborative teams puts organizations at the forefront of innovation and successful application development. DevOps and QAOps are a cultural shift that creates teams that focus on continuous improvement, innovation, and frequent high-quality code deployments for more positive customer experiences.
One essential process is establishing a continuous feedback loop that provides ongoing and up-to-date information on requirement changes and testing results. Use meetings, chat messaging, and task development tools to foster direct and rapid communication. Building a team that’s collaborative, communicative, and operational with mutual respect and shared goals requires an investment of time and careful attention. Building such teams is possible and has a high return on investment in terms of final products and customer experience. DevOps and QAOps provide organizations with the means to deliver high quality applications to customers continuously. Customers get the application quality they need at a pace that meets business needs.