Do You really need DevOps for Digital Assurance and Testing?

The mere idea that your stock market application could crash and get inaccessible for hours is definitely unpalatable. With the current digital revolution there are chances that you might check your stock market score not just once during the day, but possibly once every hour across any device. That’s practically true with any kind of application today. Omni-channel experience and seamless performance is indispensable and Digital Assurance Testing helps to ensure it for the users. Can DevOps as a preferred methodology bring real value for Digital Assurance and Testing?

Taming the Digital Storm with DevOps

Digital revolution is definitely enhancing the overall customer experience, but the challenges posed are immense. Speed, Security, and Quality are growing as major concern areas for businesses with a digital outlook. Today, almost every business is software-driven with focus on enhancing customer experience with applications. Massive boom in digital technologies such as Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, and IoT is forcing enterprises to constantly redefine their development and testing strategies.

Likewise, there is a growing pressure on developers and testers to deliver robust software and applications that can take intense heat in the digital gamut. Hence, speed is not the only requisite here, the focus has to be on ensuring quality on a consistent basis. DevOps methodology enables teams to confirm various aspects of an application on a consistent basis. It bridges the gap between development and operations and encourages collaborative approach towards application development.

DevOps enables Continuous Development, Continuous Testing, and Continuous Integration. This makes it possible for teams to launch and upgrade applications and software in real-time without the stress to manage downtime. As we understand, testing is more of a collaborative activity, but has to be driven by strategy and methodology. This will help enterprises to get ‘digital’ in the real sense of the word.

Digital Enterprises work with a responsive IT model, with practices that boost communication, collaboration, integration, and automation. DevOps as a practice is compatible on all fronts. Nevertheless, when it comes to Digital Assurance, what makes DevOps indispensable?

Automation brings Efficiency and Speed

Automation is one of the key highlights of DevOps Adoption. It not only enables teams to gain speed, but also brings efficiency to the overall development cycle. However, it is important to choose the right tool mix for DevOps, which is compatible with the project’s need and also provides the required reports. Digital Assurance implies that there is consistency of results irrespective of the changes in the user environment.

Consistency must be maintained with the functionality, performance, and accessibility of the application. Automation frameworks and constant monitoring not only brings speed, but also efficiency for testing.

People-driven process

DevOps, as we all agree and understand by now, is a people-driven process. It can be executed with constant collaboration between teams. You cannot possibly expect Continuous Deployment without support from all the functions. When DevOps is adopted, it brings consensus between all the functions to adhere to the protocols and defined processes.

Collaboration is the greatest strength that DevOps brings for Digital Assurance. It helps to take care of aspects such as environment configuration management, reservation and tracking, and anything that involves the testing and development scenario.

Upskilling of teams

There is no definite process, tool or methodology to test Digital Technologies. Teams need to reinvent and revisit their defined methodologies by bringing in new tools and frameworks for testing. DevOps enables Continuous Testing and Integration, which encourages frequent testing. This gives teams the opportunity to try new strategies and check their impact with effective tracking.

Eventually, it results in building a strong up-skilling strategy that creates an empowered team. Once teams get enabled, it helps them to take informed decision when the next project or a similar application comes in. This also helps enhance capabilities and offers better work experience for testers with an all-encompassing experience.

Opportunities for Innovation and Growth

What do digital enterprises need to grow and stay profitable in the consumer scenario? There is no replacement for innovation, which can trigger further growth. Digital Assurance helps enterprises to ensure that their solution can sustain and bring higher RoI amongst competition. DevOps as an approach boosts the idea of collaboration and responsiveness in the development and testing process.

There is a possibility to go back and reconfirm what was tested and what worked for the team. This helps teams to stay innovative and look at diverse growth opportunities. Traditional process of development and testing gives very less scope for enterprises to bring in such flexibility and responsiveness. Moreover, DevOps ensures that QA begins way ahead in the development cycle, which enables Early Defect Detection. When bugs are identified early, it not only helps in ensuring quality, but also brings cost-effectiveness.

Builds Resilience and faster time-to-Recovery

Yes, DevOps will help you to bring down the possibility of failures, but how inevitable could it be? In the current digital scenario, an application must not necessarily get judged by its failures, but by its capability to rebound after a failure. Digital Assurance must confirm that in an event of a data breach, a website crash, or a virus attack, the application must be robust enough to recover fast and get back to work quickly.

DevOps helps to ensure faster rollback by facilitating quicker communication channels, better collaboration, improved ability to research and innovate, and overall a strong Performance oriented culture. Furthermore, it brings tangibility and traceability in the testing process, which comes in handy when there is a system or an application failure.

Michael Versace, Research Director, Digital Strategy and Agency Services at IDC said, “Over a quarter of digital executives say budgets for digital consulting and agency services partners will increase by 25% over the next one to two years, and about 10% say budgets for these services will double by 2019. And, as more firms adopt enterprise-wide digital strategies, executives should expect their relationships with professional services providers to embody a larger portfolio of digital capabilities.”

Digital enterprises need more innovation, which has to bring in higher RoI for the business. Digital Assurance will help enterprises to adopt new technologies with confidence and DevOps will further streamline Digital Assurance and Testing.

A lot can be left open-ended on this front. What do you think? Please leave your views in the comments.

Cigniti’s Digital QA service helps organizations in their Digital initiatives. We have developed checklists, frameworks, processes, testlets, methodologies and best practices to ensure effective and efficient validations of text, images, and videos of applications across devices. Connect with us to successfully implement digital transformation.