Recognizing Continuous Integration Testing

As application development practices progressively tendency towards Agile development and DevOps, Continuous Integration and Delivery have come to be the go-to procedures for receiving fast responses, meeting changing requirements, and optimizing quality.

But what precisely is CI/CD and just how does testing fit in? As more organizations embrace these practices, a few will increase testing, while others will allow it to fall through the cracks. Figure out how teams are including constant integration testing to equilibrium speed and quality more efficiently.

Continuous Integration is a clinic where a team of developers intermittently merges their code changes into a shared repository. Developers are incorporating numerous times throughout the day and committing to changes about once per day or a couple of times a week.

Continuous Integration is favored by software teams since it allows daily constant feedback in growth from all contributors, while it's easier to catch and solve bugs early on in the process.

In turn, this ideally leads to Continuous Delivery -- since assembles are continuously managed and shipped regularly, new attributes can be sent to the end consumer on a weekly or daily basis instead of a quarterly or yearly one.

Additionally, by incorporating small, frequent changes, it's a lot easier to catch issues early in the SDLC. Teams often find this CI/CD results in higher quality software with fewer bugs, and if bugs are found, they are usually much easier to fix.

Continuous Integration piggy-backs onto Agile development because Agile is frequently accomplished through the constant integration of features, as it had been created so developers could solve issues as they come instead of trying to predict and solve every shift upfront and just test before the product launch.

While teams after an Agile methodology attempt to encourage more change during the development process, Continuous Integration is a method that programmers to do so by making changes several times through the day or week. Additionally, sprint preparation allows for continuous feedback from both customers and developers in addition to other team members.

But though Continuous Integration often works best within Agile or even Extreme Programming, it may also be leveraged in different environments such as Waterfall or even RUP.

Another element of CI and CD that is not as commonly acknowledged is Constant Testing or the practice of testing for every single integration. You might even consider continuously analyzing a prerequisite for Continuous Integration and Delivery.

It makes sense that Constant Testing goes hand-in-hand with Continuous Integration to make sure bugs are present early and are easy to repair. While many changes are made on a daily basis, there's a chance every time for those changes to disrupt a previously working part of the code.

While teams employ Continuous Integration and Delivery to obtain a competitive advantage, it is important to acknowledge ensuring quality is equally important in the view of the end-user -- no one wishes to use a new feature which has a bug. Continuous Integration testing is a vital measure for organizations that want to differentiate from their competition.

By automating tests to match the rate of Continuous Integration, a quick delivery can be effectively achieved and acceptable standards of quality could be met concurrently.

Open Source CI Tools

Utilizing a Continuous Integration plan can be complemented with the use of more open-source tools.

Jenkins -- Jenkins is the by far the most common open source continuous integration tool. It's a Java-based automation server that has hundreds of CI/CD plugins to support building, deploying, and automation. Fundamentally, Jenkins functions to check for changes on the server, trigger a build when it detects you to set up it for testing and notify examine teams of found results. It's a strong, inviting community, simple setup, and numerous integrations that make it a leading Continuous Integration server. 

Find out about configuring and installing Jenkins here. It supports job performance across multiple programs and tracks source-code repositories while reporting the results. Buildbot can simply be configured via a Python script, though it does support all major operating systems.

TeamCity -- TeamCity permits you to develop in Java, .NET, or for mobile platforms, while providing you added functionalities and features such as gated commits, build grids, and integrations as well as more than 100 plugin choices, whereas the Open API allows you to make your own plugins.

Furthermore, tools such as CrossBrowserTesting may also be utilized to execute test automation and create an environment for continuous testing from the cloud.

Additionally, while automation is essential for keeping up with the speed of a well-oiled CI procedure, it will not necessarily be the answer to testing. For brand-new features, it's best to resort to exploratory testing. For additional cases where teams should trade in automation for live testing, have a look at our website about deciding which tests to automate.

Conclusion

As more QA and DevOps professionals begin to implement Continuous Integration and Delivery, Constant Testing will have to be quick to follow in order to better meet customer requirements, keep a competitive edge, and secure a standard of quality.

As technology advances and web testing tendencies change, having the ability to adapt to change and follow faster development cycles will become the differentiator for many applications teams. Continuous testing is the way those teams will fulfill the demands of agile practices, frequent integrations, and rapid delivery cycles.