Over an increasingly short span of time, testing training and development cycles have grown to become quicker, faster and shorter. This would mean that the QA teams would have to work even smarter and harder to keep up the pace. Some of the basic but serious challenges confronted by the QA teams would include quality assurance, optimization, process improvement and a higher productivity, to name a few of the problems per se.
LET US COMPREHEND QA WITHIN THE PREVIEW OF DEVOps
DevOps expounds good principles and practices that support in improving communication as well as cooperation between organizational silos. But on the other hand in the case of the DevOps, the walls would be made defunct and this helps in promoting the knowledge sharing, experience as well as in honing specialized Testing training skills on quality assurance that are indeed necessary to deliver quality systems. In the age of DevOps, the primary attention of the QA teams would be primarily on averting defects with the help of avant grade testing tools, rather than on spotting them.
CHALLENGES CONFRONTED BY THE QA TEAMS
THE QA CULTURE
Within the purview of DevOps, the quality needs a overhaul of how it is being conducted. This also has its obvious implications on the organizational culture as well. The immediate need of the hour is in identifying the methods that are both innovative as well as creative that would help in testing the software with sophisticated application of testing tools more efficiently, effectively, quickly and effortlessly. This would in the process advocate for a continuous adherence to quality as well as giving a boost to the ever evolving QA services provided.
FURTHERING OF QUALITY
From within the viewpoint of the DevOps, the QA teams must appreciate the necessity of business of systems being verified. To get this done, QA teams need to sit with business experts as well as the product owners to fathom how the system that is getting tested with state of the art testing tools equipment need to operate for them to support their business. Otherwise, there is a lurking fear of the QA teams getting dysfunctional if they are not a part of these initial discussions; for a greater involvement would foster better quality.
COLLABORATION
QA functions as a catalyst between development and operations. This would mean that the QA team would need to participate in discussions, right from the early stages of their training and testing process. This would facilitate in them having more effective as well as evolved software developed and supported at all times. it has now to be understood, accepted as well as recognized that the QA team has to function as a pivotal part of the project team and not as an independent functionary.
EARLY DETECTING OF FLAWS
One of the primary functions of testing DevOps at an initial stage is in the detection of defects at the fundamental stages itself. For this to happen, the QA teams should embark upon testing with highly advanced testing tools, even if the code is not a complete one. This would require a great deal of sagacity in the documenting of self sufficient user stories that could perhaps not involve others for testing.
ENCOURAGING FREQUENT BUILD VERIFICATIONS
As DevOps supports frequent builds, there is always a very high probability of the codes breaking the existing features. For this reason, it is always not advisable as well as practical to have the testers do the verification manually but perform them automated using the recommended testing tools.
TEST COVERAGE
In the domain of DecvOps, there has continuously been a rush to deliver the Quality Assured software quickly by applying techniques like continuous integration and deployment. That apart, because of the continually evolving requirements, the possibilities of missing to test critical functions with quality assurance cannot be ruled out. To circumvent this problem, a complete as well as a detailed traceability for test functions needs to be documented and maintained.
