The Importance of Continuous Testing

With many software companies releasing updates at an increased frequency, continuous testing is setting a precedent in how digital tools are developed and reviewed for quality assurance. This begs the question—what is continuous testing and why is it so important?

Continuous testing is a software testing method that helps to uncover and address problems at different stages of the development journey—the main goal is to evaluate business risk coverage and ensure the best user experience and customer satisfaction. Self-explanatory in name, continuous testing introduces quality assurance from the get-go with constant iterations of testing and actionable feedback at each stage.

Unlike other testing types, continuous testing doesn’t necessarily require a large staff; automated testing can facilitate rapid delivery without adding more pressure on internal teams. This can include end-to-end tests that determine the overall user experience across the front and back end of the technology.

Fitting closely with Agile development practices, continuous testing has a fundamental role in DevOps to speed up release cycles and improve product quality. It also improves the development team’s awareness of product quality and functionality.

A high level of detail is required to review production code and check for errors, but the feedback from these tests is invaluable. This helps developers and product managers identify and fix critical bugs in the early stages of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and ensure that errors in the code aren’t released into the wild.

In addition, this enables more informed release decisions, which is crucial when considering the accelerated timelines for development, design and delivery of updates. Because many of these tests are automated, they’re more efficient and help cut costs associated with rigorous testing over a longer period of time.

Continuous testing also helps to facilitate:

• Feedback to all involved teams and important stakeholders  
• Higher quality code and a more stable user experience
• The breakdown of siloed teams for more collaborative work in development, testing and operations
• Objective assessments of adherence to specific business goals

While the benefits are clear, there are some challenges that continuous testing presents. The issue with accelerated delivery is the rush to accommodate fast release schedules, and this leaves less time to fine-tune automation. Plus, some companies don’t have the ability to set up automated testing because of limitations in their technology or a lack of stability in their testing processes.

In addition, test data management presents unique difficulties. Limited access to production systems, extracting test data housed across various databases and repositories, maintaining and analyzing multiple datasets for each test all present challenges that can hinder the success of continuous testing.

An agile approach to continuous testing can give real-time results that actually improve your product, but it can be time consuming to assemble the right team of testers and organize the right digital tools to carry these tests out. This is where crowdtesting can be a huge help by utilizing a strength in numbers approach, you can increase the agility and speed of your software releases and keep your customers happy. To learn about how crowdtesting with test IO can help your business, sign up for a free demo.