When we think about quality assurance (QA), we often picture a dedicated team focused on identifying bugs. However, this definition has evolved. Today, QA teams play a pivotal role in managing release cycles and ensuring that testing is an integral part of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
CI/CD streamlines the software release process by continuously testing and integrating efforts across teams, resulting in faster and higher-quality releases. At its core, a CI/CD pipeline is a script that defines the release workflow. However, to truly maximize efficiency, every phase of the pipeline must be automated—including testing.
Let’s explore how integrating automation into CI pipelines accelerates app testing and ensures seamless software delivery.
What is Continuous Testing and Why is it Essential?
Understanding Continuous Testing
Continuous Testing is a critical practice in modern software development, where automated tests are executed as part of the software delivery pipeline. It ensures that every code change, no matter how small, is validated early and often, reducing the risk of bugs making it into production.
In essence, Continuous Testing integrates automated testing into every stage of the development lifecycle—from development and integration to deployment and monitoring in production.
This approach aligns with Agile and DevOps principles, where rapid feedback loops and iterative development are key to delivering high-quality software at speed.
How Continuous Testing Differs from Traditional Testing
Unlike traditional testing, which is often performed at the end of the development cycle, Continuous Testing runs parallel to development. This shift-left approach allows teams to:
- Identify defects earlier in the lifecycle when they are cheaper and easier to fix.
- Reduce the reliance on manual testing, freeing up QA teams for more strategic tasks like exploratory testing.
- Maintain confidence in code quality even as teams adopt faster release cycles.
Key Components of Continuous Testing
To implement Continuous Testing effectively, organizations need:
-
- Automated Test Suites: A robust suite of test cases that cover functional, performance, security, and integration testing.
- CI/CD Pipelines: Seamless integration of testing into Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) workflows.
- Version Control Systems: Tools like Git to track changes and ensure the right tests are triggered for each code update.
- Cloud Infrastructure: Access to scalable resources, such as device farms or cloud testing platforms, to support testing across diverse environments.
- Real-Time Reporting: Dashboards and analytics that provide instant feedback on test results and system health.
Why Continuous Testing is Essential
- Catching Defects Early:
- By shifting testing to earlier phases, Continuous Testing ensures that defects are identified and addressed before they escalate.
- This reduces the cost of fixing bugs, as studies have shown that the cost of a defect rises exponentially as it progresses through the development cycle.
2. Supporting Faster Release Cycles:
- Continuous Testing complements Agile and DevOps practices by enabling teams to push code changes rapidly and confidently.
- Automated tests run within CI/CD pipelines validate every change, ensuring stability and reliability even during high-velocity development.
- Automated tests run within CI/CD pipelines validate every change, ensuring stability and reliability even during high-velocity development.
3. Ensuring Consistent Quality:
- Automated tests provide consistent validation across environments, minimizing human errors associated with manual testing.
- Continuous Testing also supports non-functional testing like performance and security, ensuring that the application performs optimally under various conditions.
- Continuous Testing also supports non-functional testing like performance and security, ensuring that the application performs optimally under various conditions.
4. Enhancing Team Collaboration:
- Continuous Testing fosters better communication between development, QA, and operations teams. Developers receive instant feedback on their code, allowing them to fix issues proactively.
- This shared responsibility for quality reduces silos and creates a culture of accountability.
- This shared responsibility for quality reduces silos and creates a culture of accountability.
5. Meeting Customer Expectations:
- In today’s competitive landscape, end-users expect flawless digital experiences. Continuous Testing ensures that applications are free of critical issues, delivering seamless functionality and performance.
- It also supports faster delivery of new features, keeping customers engaged and satisfied.
- It also supports faster delivery of new features, keeping customers engaged and satisfied.
6. Reducing Risks:
- By automating repetitive test cases and validating code changes continuously, teams can identify potential risks early and address them effectively.
- Continuous Testing also ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, especially critical in industries like BFSI, healthcare, and retail.
CICD Flow
Why do we need CI Pipelines With Automation?
Implementation of Agile processes has increased the number of software builds, which involves committing code changes to master regularly, but testing those builds every time manually is near to impossible.
That’s where we need to combine two worlds: QA and CI Pipeline. First we have to make sure that all our test cases are automated and we have the test suite ready with us. Now once we have our automated suite ready, the next task is to integrate those to our CI pipelines, now the question is why should we perform the CI integration?
The main reason is whenever there is a change by the development team, the CI pipeline will build the changes and at the same time trigger the Automation suite to ensure the code is always up-to-date and the changes haven’t impacted the overall features.
Test Automation in CI/CD Pipeline
In this section we will integrate the Automation Suite with the Jenkins job, so that whenever required we can trigger our test suites from the pipeline or even schedule the same.
Prerequisite for running :
– Automation suite in testNG xml
– Jenkins server access with valid credentials
STEP – 01
Integrate testng.xml suite with pom.xml. To do that we have to pass the path of testng.xml suite inside the suiteXmlFiles tag. The path which has been provided here is the path of testng xml suite used in the demo project. You will need to use the path as per the suite located on your setup.
<suiteXmlFile> tag of pom.xml:
<configuration>
<suiteXmlFiles>
<suiteXmlFile>resources\testNG_xml\RegressionSuite.xml</suiteXmlFile>
</suiteXmlFiles>
</configuration>
STEP – 02
Go to your Automation project path and open command prompt, as shown below project name is “Task” and we have opened cmd @project location:
STEP – 03
Enter maven goal for the test as: “mvn clean test” in the command prompt and hit ENTER. This will execute all the test scripts present in our suite and provide the execution status.
Important Note – This step is very important before starting the integration with Jenkins, because if it fails then we need to make sure to fix all the issues before moving it to the Jenkins server.
STEP – 04
Go to Jenkins, click on New Item as shown in below screenshot. This new item will help us create a new Jenkins job where we can integrate the automation suite which has all the test scripts for the regression suite.
STEP – 05
Provide the name for the Job, in the below screenshot we have provided the project name as “UiAutomationG11” and select “Maven Project” click on OK button. We need to realise that as our automation framework is in Maven so we are selecting Maven project, if you are using Gradle then you have to select accordingly.
Note: Always provide a meaningful name to the project with proper naming convention.
STEP – 06
Go to Build Select “Invoke top-level Maven targets”, and then Enter the Goals as “clean test” and put the pom.xml path of your project in the “POM” section as shown below. Now click on the “Save” button which is in the left bottom section.
Remember that as we are using it for demo so our pom.xml is in our local machine and we are providing path of the project in the POM section, but if you are trying to implement at project level then you need to integrate your github repo link in Jenkins so the code will be pulled from repo directly.
Step – 07
To Run the Suite Click on Build Now button as shown below, once you click it will trigger the automation suite and test scripts will get executed. After the execution gets completed we can see the status of the job run, and if it fails then the console output can be used to get the error logs for further fixes.
Benefits
Below are some of the most important benefits of App Testing with Automation and Modern CI pipelines.
Faster Release Cycle:
Pacing up the build and testing cycle will allow the team to get new features into production faster, and it also helps to reduce the test execution time exponentially by triggering from the pipeline. Pipeline helps the organisation to accelerate the release rate with utmost quality.
Maintains High Quality:
All the software process that includes continuous testing is on its way toward establishing a feedback loop to go fast and build effective software by making the automated suite part of the pipeline.
As we run our suite after every change done by the development team, it always provides a quality check of each and every code pushed by the developers. The pipeline with continuous testing builds quality and reduces risk and waste in the software development lifecycle.
Conclusion
Continuous Testing is not just a methodology—it’s a necessity for modern software development. It empowers teams to build and release high-quality applications faster, with fewer defects and greater confidence. By embedding automated testing into the CI/CD pipeline, organizations can keep pace with the demands of digital transformation and deliver exceptional user experiences at scale.
November 22, 2023
October 26, 2023
