Why Continuous Testing Deserves More Credit from the IT Industry

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Why continuous testing deserves more credit from
the IT industry
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Introduction Digital acceleration cant happen
without better-quality software, and software
testing matters more than ever for quality at
speed. This quote by the leading analyst,
Forrester, cannot be more true. While global
enterprises have accelerated their digital
adoption amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it is
essential that they do not leave software testing
out of the picture. If truth be told, software
testing is what will offer a flawless end result.
Without it, all the enterprises will be left with
our huge amounts of wasted efforts on unaesthetic
strokes and a non-appealing end picture. When
Agile and DevOps methodology were introduced, it
was believed that the Waterfall practices are
being left behind for good. Agile promised to
bring in speed within the software development
life cycle, while DevOps was supposed to enhance
cross-department collaboration by eliminating
silos. Together, Agile and DevOps showed the
mettle to lead highly collaborative and
accelerated SDLCs that would shorten the
time-to-market by pushing releases into
production faster than ever. Amidst all the
frenzy of an exciting new way of developing
software, the IT teams forgot about the most
critical, yet most overlooked function software
testing. As a result, the adoption of the new and
exciting methodologies failed tremendously
leading to the belief among several organizations
that DevOps or Agile is not for them. If only
they had paid attention to the testing part.
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What is continuous testing? In laymen terms,
continuous testing means to test continuously at
every stage of the software development life
cycle. Continuous testing goes beyond the
shift-left strategy that implied the initiation
of testing early in the life cycle. Rather, it is
about shifting left as well as right, implying to
test everywhere. Therefore, continuous testing
can be defined as a strategy to start testing
early along with the beginning of the
development, and then continue testing at each
stage as the SDLC progresses toward the release
and deployment. Continuous testing coupled with
automation ensures that the developed software is
always in a releasable state, excelling in terms
of quality and offering visibility into the
business risk coverage.
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•  
• Benefits of continuous testing 
• Early detection of defects As testing starts
  early on, the defects are caught earlier. 
• Continuous feedback mechanism The test
  everywhere strategy helps in creating a
  continuous feedback loop that allows continuous
  improvement in the code. 
• Shorter time-to-market When the software testing
  process take place in parallel to the
  development, significant time is saved. 
• Lower costs, higher quality Continuous testing
  and continuous feedback ensures higher quality
  code releases, which in turn reduces the overall
  costs of development and testing. 
• Faster releases As testing assumes the role of a
  facilitator, rather than a bottleneck, releases
  get accelerated. 
• Delighted customers A defect-free and smooth
  application translates into happy customers. 
• Lower business risks Lower defects and high test
  coverage significantly reduces the business
  risks. 
• Higher productivity With faster feedback,
  debugging also happens faster and easily,
  resulting in enhanced productivity. 
• Read Full Blog at https//www.cigniti.com/blog/co
  ntinuous-testing-devops-test-automation/

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