These are three different segments, but what's common to them is a felt need for processes that are deployment-ready, iterative and collaborative. This is where DevOps fits in, a process, by which the developers and operations engineers work together throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC) for improving business outcomes.
For quite some time there has been a notion that testing could be a long drawn out procedure as it takes into account test data management and monitoring the code development.
"Companies are adopting the development and operations (DevOps) model, whereby development, deployment and production are reliable and happen at an enormous speed. It also gives scope for the development and operations teams to strategize their efforts towards achieving business targets. According to the 2017 State of DevOps Report, in the case of mature high performance organizations, deployment manufacturing happens many times a day," said Shiva Jayagopal, founder-director WinVinaya InfoSystems, addressing the audience at Test Con 2018, a conference for test automation professionals organized by Clavent.
An extension of agile, DevOps is the automated and seamless process flow from idea to production through which quality remains consistent. When organizations integrate DevOps into the system, it's a culture that extends to include cloud computing and programmable code, among others. The collaborative teams comprise developers, system engineers, business analysts, and security and operations personnel. This collaborative effort helps in quality assurance (QA) and better performance applications, besides removing the barriers between departments.
Test automation in agile is about continuous integration and continuous delivery. But test automation in DevOps is more mature as software development functions align with IT operations for teams to jointly build, test and release applications and products. Basically it's about design, integration, test, delivery and monitoring software changes.
Naturally, this has opened out a plethora of testing opportunities. "India is a testing hub and 50 per cent of the global testing that takes place, happens here. Around 35 per cent of the budget in IT companies is spent on testing," added Surojeet Sengupta, Director QA-GE.
Tool selection for test automation follows the IEED outlook like in other tech areas. IEED, an acronym for Identify, Evaluate, Estimate and Decision, is a determining factor for selection. And the process is the same: identify the tool required, evaluate the shortlisted tools, estimate the cost and then take a decision.
"The automation testing market is estimated to grow to $19.27 billion by 2023. While the market is expected to open out opportunities, there are challenges to be overcome," reasoned Anil Kumar Mishra, Senior Tech Manager, Tech Mahindra. There are various ways of tackling the challenge, at times even multiple technologies can combine for executing the requirement of a single automation.
"For instance, the integration of Artificial intelligence (AI) with test automation can help in defect prediction, and hence, test planning. Then, a large community of operation software (OS) professionals can handle test automation related requirements," added Mishra.
At a glance, test automation is essential to fix bugs in the system, besides ensuring reduced business expenses and faster time to market. However, as test automation is a relatively new frontier, some organizations don't have the time to automate. This is how tech institutions offer specialized skilled courses on test automation. Companies too are scaling up processes through in-house training initiatives that extend to testing approaches, packaged and open source technologies.
That's crucial because we live in a software-driven world, where the demand for digital adoption has increased exponentially.