Why Continuous Testing Is The Best Thing That Happened to Digital Transformation

Change has always been at the center of mankind’s evolution, mapping the journey since the primitive era to this digital age. Continuous experimentation, trials and errors, continuous improvement and integration into everyday life, and then continuous distribution of the experimented, adapted technology has led us to where we stand today. From simply surviving on necessities to building a life of luxury and convenience, mankind has surely come a long way. The extent to which we have evolved, the distance that we have traversed, has brought us to the point of advancement where we exist physically but survive digitally.

Evolution has been the only constant over the centuries of our existence. But what makes digital transformation so revolutionizing is its capability of bridging the difference between physical and digital. When a snake sheds its skin, it changes; when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it transforms. Digital transformation is metamorphosizing every industry into a winged butterfly. But, if done wrong, you’ll only have a really fast caterpillar who may complete the designated tasks much faster, but at the cost of quality and efficiency. This is where, continuous testing takes the reins – to ensure that your organization truly transforms into an enterprise capable of delivering excellent customer satisfaction rapidly.

Continuous testing is the enzyme that catalyzes digital transformation through critical supervision. Jeff Bezos said, “In today’s era of volatility, there is no other way but to re-invent. The only sustainable advantage you can have over others is agility, that’s it. Because nothing else is sustainable, everything else you create, somebody else will replicate.” While it is true that speed is indispensable to stay competitive, it is also a fact that customers today value quality more than anything else. Thus, to derive the desired customer satisfaction levels, quality should be the driving strategy – the fuel to every digital initiative wagon for the modern enterprises.

The adoption of Agile and DevOps methodologies at the cost of quality will ultimately backfire, resulting in an organization that churns out failures at a really fast pace. Continuous testing keeps the quality in check while maintaining the required speed and effectiveness.

Will digital disruption cause you to evolve or perish?

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin

Digital transformation is disruptive in nature. The scale and scope at which digital transformation affects an organization or industry needs proper change management strategy centered on business, technology, processes, and people. Adaptability among these four aspects forms the foundation of digital transformation success.

As organizations are optimizing their SDLC with a combined Agile and DevOps approach, they often tend to ignore the most critical aspect – Quality Assurance and Testing. With continuous testing, not only can the organizations survive the most disruptive of innovations, but also make sure that they leverage the disruption to their benefit. Continuous testing strategy guarantees that agile and DevOps do not cost an organization the quality of their products and services.

What is needed for a successful continuous testing strategy?

In continuous testing, there is no shifting left or right. Testing has to be continuous, from the beginning, and at every step of each sprint. In order to be in tandem with the speed of Agile+DevOps SDLC, continuous testing needs the support of automation. However, everything should not be automated. The right mix of manual and automated testing performed continuously is required. To improve the test coverage and spectrum of continuous testing approach, cloud and automation play a key role. While automation brings in speed, cloud enables scalability and cost effectiveness.

Continuous testing strategy mandates some extent of micromanaging the organizational culture, processes, and people to align everything for completing the bigger picture of digital transformation. As organizations are relying on DevOps and Agile methodologies to empower the CI/CD pipeline, they must also integrate continuous testing into the loop to facilitate timely fulfillment. The tight sprint schedules and time constraint no longer remain a concern when testing is continuous and automated.

Continuous testing with the right amount of automation checks a software for functional as well as non-functional aspects as a sprint progresses, thus making sure that only quality product is delivered to the end users.

Conclusion

“The Last ten years of IT have been about changing the way people work. The next ten years of IT will be about transforming your business” – Aaron Levie, CEO of Box

Digital transformation is not going anywhere. It will stay, thrive, and become the norm. It is time that enterprises start taking it seriously and put in the required efforts in transforming digitally the right way. Irrespective of the methodologies and tools used, digital transformation efforts will fail without a continuous testing strategy.