Are you doing continuous testing wrong?
Tags: continuoustesting, devopslifecycle, softwaretesting
Published: 2022-02-04 13:09:19

##The need for Continuous Testing?

Continuous testing is one of the [DevOps lifecycle](https://www.simform.com/blog/devops-lifecycle/) processes where QA continuously tests the code for bugs and issues using Docker containers at every stage of the development lifecycle. Performing continuous testing greatly enhances the test evaluation report and minimizes the maintenance cost of test environments. 

The central goal of continuous testing is to achieve delivery by increasing speed and quality using automated tests. But, as the technology advances, those changes adversely stress the testing teams. In addition, the complexity of newer technologies makes it more challenging to test using conventional methods and tools.  

Because of its continuous nature, it is almost likely that you might be carrying out testing processes that are no longer effective in the long run. Below are warning signs that you need to watch out for while performing continuous testing.  

##Signs you are doing Continuous Testing wrong

###Not testing enough

To achieve faster delivery, many organizations are either skipping the testing procedure altogether or performing shallow testing just for doing it. In most IT organizations that follow agile practices, testing is managed by teams generally outside the scrum teams. Inefficient communication between the developers and testers acts as friction resulting in developing an application that hasn’t been thoroughly tested.

Faults in such applications are only discovered during production. Therefore, organizations need to plan testing into their sprint and allocate enough resources to ensure the task is performed with utmost quality.


###Automating the wrong CI Tests

Although automation saves a hefty amount of your time doing mundane tasks, it doesn’t come economically. Moreover, if an organization invests in automation, it expects maximum value for its agile team members. As such, you should refrain from automating at the wrong places that can lead to ineffective automated tests. 

A list of a few tests that you should avoid are -

- Refrain automating rarely used scenarios
- Do not automate tests that take a concise time to complete.
- Do not automate tests that require multiple people, teams, or systems, as it will slow down the process.

###Testing tool and development tool mismatch

When your development and testing team don’t work in synchronicity with each other, the resulting ineffective communication fosters terrible practices such as having separate versions of test scripts and feature code. This leads to misalignment between them. API/UI automated tools in the market are expensive and don’t offer seamless integration with standard versioning systems like Git. Apart from this, other tools that provide GUI for visual workflow capabilities create a false expectation between test managers regarding the maintainability and reusability of the automated tests. 

No one can scale [automated test suites](https://docs.oracle.com/en/industries/communications/cloud-native-core/2.2.0/ats_guide/understanding-automated-testing-suite.html#GUID-EF5BFBAD-8913-49BA-A37A-BD63807A5793) unless they are curated as the feature code. Performing such a task requires balancing programming skills and knowledge of the industry’s best practices. 

###External system integrations are performed too early

You need to know when to integrate an external system. Because once integrated, you need to carefully and effectively test those integration points. The problem with incorporating external systems while performing acceptance testing is that you have less control over the system. Setting up the starting state of an external system can pose a tricky task. Failing to achieve that results in unpredictable test runs, which will fail most of the time. In addition, you will be spending a lot of time discussing a fix with the external providers. 

To avoid such a scenario, you need to consider creating test doubles. These test doubles will represent the connection to all external systems. You can then use them in an early stage development environment for faster and deterministic test results. If you are new to the concept of test doubles, you can read more about it [here](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TestDouble.html). 

##Conclusion

Continuous testing is one of the crucial processes of the DevOps lifecycle. It comprises various components like team structure, testing prioritization, test data, testing tools, etc. All of these play a critical role in continuous testing and must work in unison. This blog has formulated a list of warning signs that you need to be aware of while performing continuous testing. Which one of these affected your teams? Let us know in the comments below.