In an era of constant changes and updates, it can feel like you’re caught in a never-ending cycle of playing catch-up.  As a result, we frequently hear people ask how it’s possible to use software to gain competitive advantage. The answer to this question lies in the combination of strategies and technologies that enable effective digital leadership. Companies must be ready to implement new features and functionality as soon as they are rolled out, but with that comes risk. Simply stated, software testing is more important than ever – you don’t want to make the news headlines for a software failure. But the quality assurance process takes time that can result in dulling your company’s competitive edge.

So how can companies develop and update software quickly, while also ensuring high quality implementation?

In a recent article, Worksoft’s CTO, Shoeb Javed said “Software testing is usually performed as an isolated and independent activity confined within an allocated time span and set of resources. Once the development is done, testers are expected to find any issues and report them back for fixes. This process might have worked decades ago. However, in the internet age, the landscape is much different.” Adding to the challenges of keeping pace is rapidly expanding enterprise application complexity. This is yet another reason manual testing has become an ineffective strategy when it comes to large applications.

That’s why companies are turning to continuous testing. Continuous testing provides a high level of QA coverage by enabling companies to run tests all the time. Instead of having to identify specific test groups, and then setting aside time for each set of tests to be run, testing is executed continuously. Most leading experts recognize that to achieve a Continuous Integration or Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) chain – you must have automation. Several of the reasons for this include:

  • Automated tests are executed quickly, leading to faster results
  • Agility through automation makes for easier test migration
  • Automation leads to fewer defects – it’s more consistent than manual testing

This shift toward CI/CD means that once companies have incorporated automation, they can move updates to production faster – consistently taking advantage of new fixes, features and functionality. They also avoid the manual testing bottleneck that comes from needing a dedicated testing team for each individual update.

As Shoeb noted in the article mentioned above, “Continuous works because instead of confining the testing process to a group and time, it’s done by everyone and all the time. In some way, every person is involved in fueling the testing efforts directly with tangible and measurable results, making quality everyone’s daily focus. Sales, marketing, support, development and product management – all contribute in providing market insights, customer feedback on what’s working, and technical help – together creating a continuous testing cycle and great feedback loop to continuously test, measure and refine the product’s quality efforts.”

To learn more about the core challenges related to achieving continuous testing, and how you can overcome them, read this post!