The document discusses best practices for DevOps testing strategies and highlights the evolution of software development alongside the integration of Agile and DevOps methodologies. It emphasizes the importance of continuous testing, automation, and collaboration between development and operations teams to deliver high-quality software efficiently. The use of advanced tools and emerging trends like DevSecOps and AIOps is also recommended for optimizing the testing strategy within the DevOps framework.

1. Unravelling the Best Practices for
DevOps Testing Strategy
With time progressing, technology is transforming at a lightning speed to make the software
development process much simpler, faster, qualitative and convenient. Technologies like machine
learning and AI are being utilised in several ways, not only to process qualitative and faster data
but also to process predictive data. Having said that, the software development lifecycle has also
evolved extensively since the last decade. Till date agile is the go to development process used by
most of the development team, but since the introduction of DevOps, teams are either opting
for Agile+DevOps or even implementing only the DevOps methodology. The basic difference
between Agile and DevOps is that Agile refers to an iterative approach which focuses on
collaboration, customer feedback and rapid releases while DevOps brings the development and
the operations team together to manage the end to end engineering process. DevOps, especially in
the area of testing products, brought a paradigm shift! In this blog, we will dig deeper into
the DevOps testing strategies and understand how it contributes as the best testing strategy for
Software Development Life Cycle.
What is DevOps ?
DevOps is such a term that doesn’t have a definitive definition, however, those that do
attempt to define it seem to get it right because of its varied understanding. DevOps cannot be
termed as a software development methodology, or a site of tools, etc, it is a philosophy to
bring the development, testing, operations team together in order to meet the need for shorter
and more frequent software deliveries. This helps the organizations to focus more and
respond frequently on the changing business requirements. DevOps also focuses on regularly
optimising the workflow, architecture, and infrastructure inorder to deliver high quality
applications, this process majorly constitutes into DevOps Cultural Shift.

2. Setting the base by implementing Agile – DevOps approach
The goal of most DevOps projects is to automate as many manual processes as possible.
These manual processes do offer roadblocks in speedy deployment. This is caused by the lack
of shared ownership of the end product which is contrary to the basic agile process where the
cross functional agile teams are equally responsible for the quality of the product or the
success of the project. This causes the agile DevOps team to perform testing by the entire
team, be it developers, testers or operations team. In the DevOps model, testing is done
continuously, at the earlier stages of development lifecycle, often and even after the
applications are in production.
The goal of every DevOps strategy is to build, test and release softwares faster and
frequently. In an organisation you might get these two scenarios, where either you start fresh
where the coding culture or development pipeline is not yet established or where the
development or testing practices are already established.
Set Up a Continuous Delivery Pipeline
In the first case, where the coding practices are yet to be formulated, automating your
software delivery pipeline would be the first step. If you are successful in creating a
Continuous delivery pipeline then you would be ahead of your competitors as you would be
the first one to deliver a higher quality software in the hands of the clients and users, faster
than your competitors. Also, you would be able to respond to the clients demands and
changes more rapidly.
Using Workflow Visualization tools
Now, in the case of adding a DevOps pipeline into an existing organisation having an already
defined development pipeline, you might come across several bottlenecks in your software
delivery process. These bottlenecks may range from the small faulty manual processes to big
bang roll outs that fail during production, leading to unhappy users.
There are several ways to get a handle over the current state of your development process by
using workflow visualization tools like business process maps and flow charts to break down

3. and understand the current delivery process and extract its flaws and roadblocks. One Of the
simplest visual process management tools is the Kanban Board.
Kanban
Helps the team to improve workflows through performance indicators
The kanban board, as shown in the image above , is just like sticky notes that depicts the
project status, progress, and other issues. The value that it adds in your DevOps pipeline is
that it indicates the progress and the bottlenecks in your DevOps roadmap which encourages
the team to improve the workflow. It highlights the bottlenecks in the workflow that cause the
work to slow down or impact the performance indicators that the entire DevOps team (from
testing to development to operations) had mutually agreed on.
Improves collaboration and encourages the Dev and Ops team to follow single
workflow
It also helps the Development and Operations team to work in collaboration. It helps them to
avoid duplicate work and optimise the company’s release management process, in the future
you will likely see an evolution of the two teams merging into one single team with a single
workflow that includes both the Development and the Operations activities.
Focus on Continuous Testing
Continuous testing is a key element of a successful Devops pipeline. Continuous testing is a
shift left approach designed to test earlier, often with the goal of increasing the quality and
making the test cycles shorter and reducing the possibility of software defects and making
their way into the production code. It maintains a high level of quality as it validates the code
for quality at each and every stage of the development life cycle. Continuous testing should
be carried out in the following stages
 Continuous Development;
 Continuous Integration (CI);
 Continuous Delivery (CD); and

4.  Continuous Monitoring
Continuous development
Continuous development is the first stage for setting up a continuous delivery pipeline. In
case your developers are following the Test driven development (TDD) then they will write
unit tests for each piece of code, even before the development code is written. TDD helps the
testers to think through each piece of code they are building, their behaviours in terms of
input, output and error conditions. New features implemented by the developers are checked
through a central code base prior to the software build, which compiles the software code into
the binary code.
Continuous Integration
In Continuous Integration, small pieces of code are deployed into a centralized repository
quite frequently. Each change (software code) is tested to prepare the build and also the
integration errors are kept in check to avoid any errors. Hence testing is done early and often
in continuous integration which inturn increases the speed of software development.
Continuous Delivery
In Continuous Delivery, once the software code passes all the required tests, it is then
released into the production environment. This ensures that very good quality builds are
released to the customers. The advantage of continuous delivery is that it allows the delivery
of the new functionality to the users within minutes and when needed, it is also responsible
for giving instant feedback to the DevOps testing team, this allows them to respond quickly
to the customer demands. The downside of Continuous Delivery is that, in case you happen
to deliver softwares that has bugs in them, the probability of getting the clients irate and
losing them is high. To avoid this risk in Continuous Delivery, many DevOps teams prefer
testing post deployment in the production stage which is also called right shift testing. Here

5. you can also take user feedback and incorporate it in the current build. This last phase is
nothing but a part of continuous monitoring.
Best Practices for Continuous Testing
Automate as many tests as you can
In Continuous Testing, the testing is done early and validation of software code occurs at
each and every stage of the development pipeline. Testing here becomes a challenge where
the application is being constantly updated via Continuous Integration, where the code is
integrated constantly into a shared repository. Automation testing is key here to get quick
feedback about the application quality and pass the code to the next stage of deployment. The
faster the testing of code happens, the faster the code is deployed and faster the product is
released. Hence, pairing Continuous Integration with automation testing enables the team to
test the code in every new iteration and reduces the chances of errors in the code.
As shown in the image above, you can use this figure as a Test Automation Pyramid for
your DevOps testing strategy. The base or the first step is made up of Unit tests, this can be
a strategy if the developers are integrating the code into a shared repository several times a
day. This involves running unit tests or component tests and a variety of acceptance and
integration test cases are executed on every check-in (application update).
Use Pair Testing on Tests you do not Automate
Knowledge transfer through pair testing is one of the best practices to increase the efficiency
by allowing the senior members to train the junior ones. This will help maintain the DevOps
pipeline velocity, this won’t break the workflow and instead make it more efficient. Pair
testing is similar to pair programming where two programmers work together in the same
project. In pair testing, two testers work on the same keyboard to test the application wherein
one does the testing and the other analyses the test results. This can even be done between the

6. tester and the developer. Pair testing is also instrumental in breaking the communication
barrier between the testers, developers and application/platform operators and helps create
interdependency between cross functional teams working in silos.
Leverage Advanced DevOps Tools
Staying updated with cutting-edge DevOps tools is crucial for optimizing your testing
strategy. Incorporate tools like Docker and Kubernetes for containerization, ensuring
consistent environments across development, testing, and production. Use Jenkins for
seamless CI/CD integration, automating the build, test, and deployment processes.
Additionally, AI-driven testing tools like Pcloudy enhance test automation efficiency and
accuracy, leveraging AI/ML Models to adapt and optimize test scripts continuously.
Embrace Emerging Trends in DevOps
Incorporating emerging trends like DevSecOps and AIOps is essential for a robust DevOps
strategy. DevSecOps ensures security practices are integrated throughout the development
lifecycle, addressing the need for continuous and automated security measures. Meanwhile,
AIOps leverages artificial intelligence to optimize IT operations, providing predictive
analytics and automated issue resolution. Pcloudy supports AIOps by enabling self-healing of
test scripts and identifying performance issues, ensuring a secure, efficient, and resilient
DevOps environment.
Conclusion
If we look back to the evolution of software development lifecycles, it has come a long way
with the introduction of DevOps. Although it is no big secret that Agile is one of the best
practices for software development which brought the clients and the development teams
together, DevOps had something more to add. As the name suggests it brings the
development and operations team together to deliver a software release, follows Continuous
Integration and Continuous Delivery to accelerate the speed of testing and software delivery,
these factors makes DevOps unique and more valuable. But as we say there is always room

7. for improvement, we have to follow some strategies to make the most of the DevOps
workflow. Hope the strategies shared in this blog will help you make your DevOps roadmap
more clear and achievable.