Software application development is becoming dominated by the concept of Continuous Delivery (CD) as a way of improving the customer experience. This means there is a growing need for continuous testing to support any implementation or development as it is delivered.
For consumer focused organisations in particular, CD is a fantastic way to continually improve customer services, and to keep improving and streamlining developments to keep ahead of the competition. The BBC, for example, recently unveiled their new homepage that they developed using CD, which they hope will improve their user experience.
Continuous Testing for Continuous Delivery
The implementation of CD across industry has led to a rapid increase in the pace of software development. This has put traditional methods of quality assurance and testing under considerable strain. It is vital that software testing companies develop new approaches to meet the challenges posed by CD.
Continuous testing will add human tests and other user acceptance testing to the CD model. This marks a divergence from more traditional processes, because the tests will change independently over time regardless of any schedule.
Of course, most organisations do not have the in-house capital to devote to such software testing and management, which are very resource heavy. For that reason it is important that third party support services are able to properly fill that role. This all means that there is considerable scope for companies that can provide a software testing service, such as https://www.bugfinders.com.
People, Process and Technology
To facilitate CD, the software development cycle must be adjusted. The focus needs to be on three areas, to enable successful delivery and ongoing testing.
Test engineers need to be empowered so that decision-making is quick and reactive when issues arise. The process needs to be continually tested with full code coverage, as developments are integrated into the system. The technology needs to provide a system of automated white box testing, and the ability for on-demand testing in real time.
Continuous Development is potentially problematic as changes to the system are automatically delivered to end users, so there needs to be confidence both in the resilience of the application infrastructure itself, and in the team responsible for development and testing. However, if you get the right team, the benefits for consumer focused organisations and their customers are enormous.
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