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Enabling DevOps with Test Automation

DORA’s 2023 State of DevOps report affirms that 84% of the surveyed organizations use at least one DevOps practice in their development workflows, and the most common integration for 80% of the companies was the CI/CD pipeline. Further, Gartner’s recent survey reported that industrial cloud platforms will emerge as a business necessity for around 50% of organizations by 2028. 

The surge in DevOps implementation is due to its significant benefits, including agility, flexibility, collaboration, and early testing in development to ensure faster delivery of high-quality products to market. Testing is integral to successful software development, so DevOps adaptation is incomplete without embracing DevOps automated testing. With automation testing, you can shorten testing cycles, avoid human errors, and get early feedback, which expedites code development and changes. 

This article will explore the importance of DevOps test automation and discuss ways to incorporate it into DevOps procedures. 

Test Automation Explained

Test automation is a software testing process that executes tests using tools like Selenium rather than human testers. Automation testing has become critical due to rapidly evolving technology, increasing customer demands, complex app features, and manual testing challenges, such as unnecessary delays, human errors, and laborious regression cycles.

Test automation is integrated into modern-day iterative and incremental agile procedures to save time, detect early bugs, and speed up development. However, only specific types of test cases can be automated, while others demand human intervention. For instance, unit and regression tests can be automated, whereas usability testing needs human judgment and falls under manual testing. 

Related: Learn more about automation testing. 

How Test Automation Fits Into DevOps

DevOps emphasizes continuous development, testing, early feedback, and rapid, stable build releases. Therefore, integrating automation testing in the DevOps cycle increases its efficiency, as it allows for optimized resource usage while saving time and expediting the development process. 

Conventionally, development teams performed testing manually, a tedious, lengthy, and time-consuming process resulting in release delays. Since these tasks also involved updating test cases, relying solely on manual testing is neither efficient nor effective. 

However, integrating automated testing into DevOps processes, such as CI/CD pipeline, saves time by executing the same scripts for repeated test cycles and fosters a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility between development, operations, and QA teams. This integration brings the best of DevOps and automation to the table, such as: 

  • Speed and optimal usage of resources via automation testing 
  • And a high level of cooperation and visibility of progress and issues between the stakeholder teams. 

How Test Automation Supports DevOps Principles

Test automation aligns seamlessly with DevOps principles, supporting continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD). Below are a few reasons why automation is integral to DevOps.

Recent studies show that companies that implement automated testing in their DevOps processes experience a 90% reduction in testing time and a 70% increase in software quality. 

  1. Continuous Integration (CI)
    With automation, each code change triggers automated tests to check the code base’s stability and integration. 
  2. Continuous Delivery (CD)
    Automated end-to-end and regression tests validate system functionality and ensure only quality code is delivered. 
  3. Speed and Efficiency
    Automated tests provide quick feedback, enabling rapid development, one of DevOps’s core principles. 

    Automation also ensures consistency and coverage in tests by automated regression and unit tests, which supports integrating testing into the development process.

  4. Early Bug Detection
    DevOps automated testing catches bugs before deployment, which reduces the cost and effort needed to fix issues. 
  5. Quality and Reliability
    Chances of human error are minimized by automation tests, ensuring smooth, reliable releases. 
  6. Scalability
    Automated testing can cater to the scalability needs of DevOps projects, especially for large and complex applications, where extensive test suites can be run without human resources. 
  7. Collaboration and Culture
    DevOps aims for higher collaboration among the stakeholder teams. Automated testing enables shift-left testing, i.e., early and frequent testing, and enhances communication among the development, testing, and operations team members. 
  8. Tool Integration
    Integration with CI/CD tools like GitLab allows automated tests to be part of the pipeline, ensuring that code changes are tested and deployed efficiently.

    Version control systems such as GitHub can be easily integrated into DevOps workflows because changes in such systems trigger automated tests, simplifying the code management process.

  9. Cost Efficiency
    Automating repetitive tasks significantly cuts the long-term costs associated with manual testing. 

Implementing Test Automation in Your DevOps Strategy

Implementing DevOps test automation requires thoughtful planning and thorough research to align with your project requirements. Integrating both effectively includes:

1. Define Goals and Objectives

State clear goals and objectives for test automation and metrics to measure success. For example, you may automate repetitive tests to save time. To measure success, you’d calculate the time saved and the number of automated regression cycles completed. 

2. Choose the Right Tools

Select testing frameworks and tools that fit your tech stack. Popular open-source libraries include Selenium, TestNG, Appium, Playwright, and more. The framework you choose will ultimately depend on your testing needs. However, it’s important to note that open-source frameworks must be standardized to ensure stability and reliability. 

A true DevOps test automation tool must align with your DevOps strategy, ensuring efficient and effective testing processes. Listed below are some popular DevOps automated testing tools. 

Tool Pros Cons
Bitbucket – Version control tool
– Easily integrated with CI/CD pipeline
– Enables collaboration
– Free plans available for small teams		 – Outdated user interface
– Lack of support for third-party app integration 
GitHub – Enables code collaboration, team management, and project management 
– Version control system
– CI/CD pipeline integration
– User authentication 
– Monitoring capabilities		 – Steep learning curve
– Inefficient customer support
Jenkins – Open-source & free to use
– Automates a wide range of test types
– Easy integration with third-party tools
– Version control 
– Enables CI/CD integration 		 – Outdated user interface
– Difficult to set up
– Logs out frequently during usage, disrupting the workflow
JMeter – Open source
– Easy-to-use interface
– Supports performance testing, load testing, mobile testing, and script testing		 – Limited to web app testing
– Inefficient reporting 
– Requires technical expertise to use

3. Select Tests for Automation

Prioritize the test cases to meet your automation goals. For example, repetitive and highly stable test cases like regression tests can be automated. On the other hand, UI/UX test cases are better suited for manual testing. Once you’ve identified test cases, specify and plan the frequency of test cycles in each release and check whether your approach ensures consistency and test coverage. A random selection works against the purpose of DevOps automated testing. 

4. Create Reusable Stable Scripts

Develop automation scripts that are stable and reusable for seamless integration into the DevOps pipeline. Ensure these scripts are well-documented, manageable, and scalable to address any feature changes and updates.  

5. Integrate With the CI/CD Pipeline

Create a clear plan to configure your CI/CD pipeline to include automated tests at various stages (build, pre-deployment, post-deployment). Run trigger tests on code commits, pull requests, and scheduled intervals to verify your configuration.

6. ​​Identify Roles and Responsibilities

Your DevOps strategy should define which team members would be responsible for the setup, scripting, execution, analysis, governance, and more. Your strategy should clearly identify their tasks during the testing process. 

7. Collaboration and Communication

Set up a system for effective and efficient collaboration between teams. Establish a feedback loop to share test results and insights, encouraging continuous improvement.

8. Training and Skill Development

If you are switching from manual to automation testing, identify your team members’ skill sets, provide appropriate training to improve their automation skills, and get them up-to-speed on best practices for test automation. 

9. Review and Optimize

Regularly monitor and evaluate the performance of your automated test scripts and update where necessary for better performance. 

10. Governance and Maintenance 

Implement robust governance and maintenance practices to ensure the longevity and effectiveness of your automation testing.

  • Develop clear guidelines for script usage and modification.
  • Regularly review and update scripts to incorporate codebase changes. 

Following the steps above, you can develop a tactical and deliberate integration plan that helps you avoid test automation challenges that can otherwise hinder the testing and development processes. 

Related: Discover the common test automation challenges here.

Best Practices for DevOps Automated Testing

Here are a few additional best practices to enhance DevOps and automation integration: 

  1. Ensure that automation testing is integrated early and often in the development lifecycle.
  2. Regularly review and update test scripts to incorporate code changes and feature enhancements. 
  3. Ensure that maintaining product quality is the shared responsibility of all the teams involved. The dev, QA, and operations teams should collaborate frequently to share project updates and feedback. 
  4. Aim for thorough validation by automating unit, integration, functional, performance, and security tests.
  5. Consider parallel test execution to save time and accelerate the feedback loop.
  6. Do not automate just for the sake of automation. Instead, align your test automation efforts with your DevOps project needs. 
  7. Hire automation experts like Testlio to carve out a comprehensively planned DevOps test automation strategy, save time, and achieve efficiency. 

DevOps test automation is essential to your development and testing infrastructure. When integrated strategically, DevOps automation enables quick feedback, the development of high-quality applications, faster delivery, and increased collaboration. 

Whether you are about to start a new DevOps project or in the middle of a workflow, contact Testlio for smooth automation testing integration in your process and to get the most out of your DevOps framework.