With mobile applications becoming popular day after another, brands are focusing on improving mobile application testing methodologies. Sharpening the Automation testing is a never ending process and meanwhile, we can focus on other testing approaches that can yield much efficient results. That’s the reason why all the QA teams are focusing on adopting continuous testing for increasing the speed and quality of mobile application testing. In this blog, we have an overview on continuous testing and discuss the benefits of continuous testing.
What is Continuous testing?
In continuous testing, an application is tested in each and every stage of an application development cycle, i.e. from designing stage to the deployment, monitoring etc. So basically continuous testing is done in the entire devops loop i.e. in all the stages of continuous integration and continuous deployment. Continuous testing investigates the quality of software at each and every stage of the deployment cycle and focuses on improving the quality of the software after each progressive stage. So this is how continuous testing takes place. The key to efficient continuous testing is using excellent test automation softwares and implementing a systematic ci/cd pipeline. Now let’s discuss the five benefits of continuous testing.
Early feedback
Continuous testing follows the principles of test early and test often. Once the build for feature work is ready from the centralised source code repository, it is tested and this report helps in getting early feedback for the feature work. As small pieces of codes are frequently deployed and tested early, it is easier to test the complete software in the later stages. Hence quality assessments starts from the earlier stages and this assessments helps in providing early feedback on the feature work.
The QA teams need not to depend on human interventions for feedback. The early feedback helps in
making timely assessments and reporting to the stakeholders in agile, as a precautionary measure against the business risks related to disastrous user experience or failed software releases.
Faster Delivery
Since small pieces of codes are deployed on the centralised repository, and as soon as the build is ready it is tested, hence here the tester does not have to wait for a longer time and in fact before the developer’s code integration all the process is automated even before the development work is complete. This helps in saving a lot of time, enabling faster delivery of features and software.
Better quality control
In continuous testing, as testing is performed at each and every step of the app development lifecycle, it investigates the quality of the app and ensures that it improves at each progressive step. It is made sure that a low quality software code is not passed to the next stage of development. This process is automated, for example a change that fails integration test is not passed for performance testing. This complete process is not only quality wise beneficial but also cost efficient. As the bugs are detected and rectified in the earlier stages, it is easier to detect and rectify the bugs at later stages and unlike the traditional testing methods here the cost of bug detection is much cheaper in the later sections.
Continuous Improvement
Continuous testing takes place in the entire devOps loop, spanning all the stages of continuous integration as well as continuous delivery. Starting from the planning and designing part to deployment and monitoring, it makes sure that quality of testing is measured at each and every step otherwise the code is not passed to further stages.
Quality@speed
Continuous testing can be made efficient by integrating proper test automation tools, hence automation testing is what can drive continuous testing to be productive. As we know that continuous testing focuses on improving the quality of the software at each and every stage of the development lifecycle, hence continuous testing promises quality and speed.
Conclusions
With surging demands for mobile applications in this digital era, it is high time to focus on better testing methodologies to improve the performance of your mobile applications. Here continuous testing comes into the picture, which provides high quality controls at each and every stage of the app development lifecycle with accelerated speed of testing. That’s the reason why most of the QA teams are focusing on implementing continuous testing and making improvements year on year for developing high performing mobile applications.
