DevOps https://www.testingxperts.com Tue, 26 Sep 2023 12:21:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.8 How to Do Performance Testing in DevOps? https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/performance-testing-in-devops/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blog-performance-testing-in-devops Thu, 03 Feb 2022 10:22:45 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=21202 Performance Testing in DevOps

This week in our weekly blog series we have come with a blog on ‘How to Do Performance Testing In DevOps? Every business needs high-performing and seamless applications (mobile & web) in less time to increase user engagement and to deliver a great customer experience (CX). This is where the need for performance testing in DevOps comes into the picture. Read this blog to know more.

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Performance Testing in DevOps

Every business needs high-performing and seamless applications (mobile & web) to increase user engagement and deliver a great customer experience (CX). Today, businesses continue to embrace DevOps to get faster releases and high-quality software that embeds continuous integration, continuous testing, and delivery. The DevOps continuous testing involves functional, performance, security, and other testing methods to ensure flawless, high-quality apps. Specifically, performance testing plays a critical role in improving the scalability, reliability, and robustness of the apps before they are released into the market.

Content 1. What is Performance Testing? 2. Some of the Use cases of Performance testing 3. Benefits of performance testing 4. Various types of Performance Testing 5. An overview of performance testing in DevOps 6. Performance testing in DevOps CI/CD pipeline 7. Performance testing process overview 8. Performance testing metrics to measure mobile app performance 9. How is performance testing important for data migration and ETL testing? 10. Significance of think time in performance testing 11. An overview of automated performance testing tools 12. Conclusion

What is Performance Testing?

what is performance testing in devops

Performance testing is a non-functional software testing method performed to check the software’s speed, responsiveness, scalability, stability, and reliability. The primary aim of this testing method is to remove performance bottlenecks from the app/software and ensure seamless performance under all conditions such as varying user loads, fluctuating networks, varying network bandwidths, etc.

Some of the Use cases of Performance testing

performance testing use cases

Checking app performance by simultaneously running multiple applications in the background

Verifying app performance when multiple users login at the same time

Checking app performance by suddenly increasing/decreasing user load

Checking app performance under various types of networks, such as Wi-Fi, LAN, 3G, 4G, etc.

Checking app responsiveness by taking into consideration the app response to user queries

Benefits of performance testing

benefits of performance testing

1. Improves website speed:

Common issues like broken images, content-related issues, frequent timeouts, etc., hamper the website speed. This non-functional testing method helps identify and resolve these issues, thus enhancing the website speed.

2. Removes performance bottlenecks from apps:

This software testing ensures the removal of critical bugs and performance bottlenecks from the software before it goes live.

3. Ensures scalability, reliability, and robustness of apps:

This testing type ensures that the software is scalable and can handle users even during peak loads. It ensures that the software performs well under unexpected situations like fluctuating networks, bandwidths, user load, etc. Thus, it ensures the software’s scalability, reliability, and robustness.

4. Enhances customer experience (CX):

End-users don’t prefer slow-loading apps and websites. This testing method helps in improving the app’s performance and speed, which ultimately enhances the CX.

5. Helps to generate more revenue:

It is known that end-users prefer apps with seamless performance. Better app performance will generate more revenue for businesses as users prefer to download such seamless apps, especially for eCommerce, telecom, and healthcare sector apps.

Various types of Performance Testing

types of performance testing

1. Load Testing:

Testers perform this testing by simulating the number of virtual users that might use the application. The principal aim of this testing method is to ensure that the application performs well under normal and peak user loads.

2. Stress Testing:

This testing technique helps identify the system’s breaking point when user load is increased beyond the expected peak.

3. Endurance Testing:

This testing helps identify any resource leakage in the system, while it is subjected to normal user load for an extended duration like 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, or 48 hours, etc.

4. Spike Testing:

It is a subset of stress testing and checks the system’s behavior by suddenly varying the no. of users. This testing checks if the system can handle the variations in user load.

5. Volume Testing:

In this testing method, multiple data-intensive transactions are performed to validate how the system performs under such data volumes.

6. Scalability Testing:

This testing method determines the capability of the system to scale up in terms of user load, data volume, number of transactions, etc. The main aim of this testing method is to determine the peak point beyond which the system prevents more scaling.

7. Component-level performance testing:

An application comprises minor components that are the smallest parts of an application. In component-level performance testing, the individual components of the application are tested to ensure the effective performance of components in isolation. Later, all the app components are tested as a group to ensure a high-performing and fully integrated application. Further, these components are integrated, and finally, performance testing is executed after integration.

An overview of performance testing in DevOps

performance testing in DevOps

Businesses continue to embrace DevOps to get faster releases and high-quality in less time. This DevOps methodology promotes collaboration between teams to deliver faster and quality releases to the customer. The DevOps lifecycle includes various stages such as Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Testing (CT), and Continuous Delivery (CD). Typically, to ensure the release of high-quality software in less time, performance testing in DevOps plays a critical role. Moreover, performance testing in DevOps is done by integrating continuous and automated performance testing in the continuous delivery pipeline. However, to take up performance and load testing in DevOps, a series of steps should be followed at each stage of the DevOps lifecycle.

Performance testing in DevOps CI/CD pipeline

performance testing in devops pipeline

Performance testing in DevOps involves continuous performance evaluation at each DevOps CI/CD pipeline stage and ensures faster feedback loops for software improvement. 

1. Code and build stage:

DevOps performance testing starts with continuous performance testing at the build stage, which involves unit performance testing. In this stage, the smallest unit of the software is checked to ensure they perform well in isolation.

2. Integration stage:

Once the unit performance testing is done, performance testing is done at the integration stage, where the smallest units of the software are integrated. The performance of these integrated units/modules is tested to ensure the effective performance of modules after integration.

3. Test stage:

During this stage, system-level performance testing is done to ensure the software performs well as expected. Once the system-level performance tests are passed, the software moves to the release and deploy stage.

4. Release and deploy stage:

During this stage, load testing and real user monitoring are performed to ensure that the software handles the user load effectively in the production environment.

5. Monitoring stage:

After the software reaches the monitoring stage, continuous performance monitoring is done, where various performance metrics are evaluated to determine areas that need improvement.

Performance testing process overview

performance testing process overview

1. Prepare performance testing checklist:

Testers should prepare a checklist before starting the test. Performance testing checklist includes what is to be tested, pass/fail criteria, user scenarios, issues to be monitored, etc. While preparing the checklist, testers need to gather the client’s requirements. 

2. Plan the test:

Prepare a test plan or test strategy which covers the aim and scope of testing, application architecture, environment details, testing tools, roles, responsibilities, etc.

3. Setup the test environment:

Testers need to set up the test environment. There are two types of test environments, on-premise, and on-cloud. The test environment should be chosen wisely, as the effectiveness of the testing process largely depends on the environment in which it is executed. Load generation environment should be configured to generate virtual load for load testing of the software.

4. Prepare test data:

To set up the test data, testers need to first extract test data, modify the data for testing the software, and generate enough test data to perform the tests.

5. Prepare test scripts, execute the test and analyze the results:

This is an important step that involves preparation of test scripts, execution of test cases, and analysis of test results to know whether it is pass or fail.

6. Fix the bugs:

The Dev team resolves all the bugs found during the testing process. Once all the bugs are fixed, the testing process is repeated to ensure defects are fixed.

7. Prepare test report:

Document all the test findings in one place and share the test report with all the stakeholders and project team.

Performance testing metrics to measure mobile app performance

performance testing metrics

1. App installation time:

This metric gives the user a first impression of the app. This metric measures the app installation time and how it can be improved.

2. App launch time:

App launch time or app start time is another important metric that must be checked in an application. Ideally, it should not be more than 1 to 2 seconds.

3. App background processing:

It is essential to ensure that app performance remains unaffected when multiple apps run parallelly. It is essential to ensure that no data loss should happen when the app runs in the background and is retrieved.

4. Client-side resource usage:

An app should not consume excess memory and must not heat the device, especially when it runs in the background. Thus, checking an app’s CPU usage and memory during its execution is essential.

5. Response time:

This metric measures the time is taken by an app to respond to a given input. Faster response time ensures less wait time and high performance of the app.

6. Average load time:

Load time of app/website and page load time is very important for users and businesses. Faster loading time or speed ensures better performance of an app.

7. Bandwidth and network compatibility:

Varying bandwidth and fluctuating networks affect the app loading time. However, to ensure effective app performance, it is essential to perform load testing of an app with minimal bandwidth and different network types and connections such as 3G, 4G, 5G, Wi-FI, etc.

8. Concurrent users:

This metric measures how many virtual users are active or accessing the app at a given point in time. The number of users using the app directly impacts the app’s performance.

9. Requests per second:

It is the measure of how many requests by second the server can handle without degrading performance or resulting in error.

How is performance testing important for data migration and ETL testing?

performance testing important for data migration

Data migration is a complex but essential process for every business. Effective data migration helps businesses ensure better data availability, reduced cost, improved performance, and more. However, while migrating data from various sources to a new system, it is essential to ensure that the new system’s performance remains unaffected after migration. This is where the need for performance testing during data migration comes into the picture. In this testing type, various performance tests are executed on the system before and after migration to ensure the new system’s performance is not degraded post-migration.

Performance and load testing play a vital role in the Extract/Transform/Load (ETL) process. The data is extracted from various sources during the ETL process, transformed into a consistent data type, and then loaded into the data warehouse or target system. Performance testing in ETL is done to ensure that the ETL system can handle a high volume of transactions. Performance tests in ETL also verify the efficiency of the ETL system by determining the actual time taken by the system to process data. The lesser the data processing time, the higher is the efficiency.

Significance of think time in performance testing

performance testing - think time

Think time is the time difference between each action performed by the user. When users visit a website, they take some time to think and take action. The difference or the time gap between each action performed by the user is known as think time.

For example, suppose a user visits an eCommerce website. The user clicks on the products tab, selects the product, reads the description, and adds the product to the cart. The time spent between clicking on the product tab to clicking on the add to cart tab is considered think time.

Think time plays a very crucial role, as it represents the user’s actual behavior in the system. A user never does all actions like login, search product, add to cart, payment, log out in one go. The users take some time to complete all actions. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce think time in this non-functional software testing technique to create a real-world scenario in the testing environment.

Another reason to introduce think time in performance and load testing is that suppose if a tester executes software testing giving multiple requests with no pause, it will fail the server. The server also needs time to process requests and give the result. Therefore, it is essential to consider think time in performance and load testing.

An overview of automated performance testing tools

performance testing tools

1. Apache JMeter:

It is an open-source tool that helps to analyze and measure the performance of a range of web applications. This tool supports various protocols, such as HTTP, HTTPS, XML, SOAP, Java-based protocols, etc. This non-functional software testing tool requires less scripting effort as compared to other tools and has simple charts/graphs that can be used for analyzing key load-related statistics and resource usage.

2. WebLOAD:

It is an enterprise-scale load testing tool that is used for web and mobile load testing. This tool comes with a good number of features and functionalities, such as Load Generation Console, Analytics Dashboard, and comprehensive IDE.

3. Stress Stimulus:

This tool is used to perform load testing of web apps, mobile apps, and enterprise apps. Stress stimulus supports on-premise or cloud load testing and works well with Fiddler. This tool comes with an end-to-end test wizard that eases the performance testing of mobile and web apps.

4. io:

It is a multiplatform performance and load testing tool. This tool allows adding performance testing into the continuous integration process, real-time monitoring of the test environment, and analyzing test results on multiple machines.

5. NeoLoad:

It is a continuous performance testing tool for desktop and mobile apps. This tool comes with great features like scriptless test creation, GUI-driven design, automated parameterization, etc. Neoload can be easily integrated with CI tools, and it allows real-time identification and removal of performance bottlenecks.

6. Load Runner:

It is the most widely used tool to test applications and measure system behavior and performance under varying loads. This tool is used to simulate thousands of concurrent users and record the variations in the system performance. This testing tool supports all advanced technologies like Ajax, Flex, HTML5.0, Java, SOAP, Citrix, along with all other legacy technologies.

7. LoadView:

It is used for cloud-based load testing, and it helps DevOps teams to test websites, web apps, and application programming interfaces (APIs) with thousands of concurrent users. This tool simulates API calls, validates API responses, and verifies the most important SLA requirements. The agile and DevOps teams can test their website’s UX under load, verify performance and identify various bottlenecks within the applications.

Conclusion

Performance testing is an essential element that determines the success of an application in DevOps processes. A high-performing app is the need of the hour for businesses and the low performance of the app can affect the brand reputation and even the CX. Hence, a well-developed performance testing method and proper automated tools should be leveraged to get high-performing and scalable apps. Thus, enterprises should leverage end-to-end performance testing from a next-gen QA and independent software testing services provider for high-performing software and faster time to market.

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Agile Vs DevOps Methodologies – A Detailed Comparison https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/agile-vs-devops-methodologies?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=agile-vs-devops-methodologies-a-detailed-comparison Tue, 14 Sep 2021 16:54:01 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=20535 Agile Vs DevOps

Today, every enterprise needs high-quality products and faster time-to-market to deliver a great customer experience (CX). But for businesses to fulfil the rising need for high-quality products, adoption of the latest and robust software development and testing methodologies is necessary. This is where the agile and DevOps methodology comes into the picture. The agile methodology … Continue reading "Agile Vs DevOps Methodologies – A Detailed Comparison"

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Agile Vs DevOps

Today, every enterprise needs high-quality products and faster time-to-market to deliver a great customer experience (CX). But for businesses to fulfil the rising need for high-quality products, adoption of the latest and robust software development and testing methodologies is necessary. This is where the agile and DevOps methodology comes into the picture.

The agile methodology plays a significant role in improving the team’s productivity with its iterative model. Whereas, DevOps methodology ensures effective collaboration between the development (Dev) and the operations (Ops) teams. Since Agile and DevOps methodologies are critical for enabling faster and quality releases, businesses are adopting them rapidly.

Content 1.  Overview of Agile and DevOps Methodologies 2.  Agile Vs DevOps Methodologies – Detailed Comparison 3.  Various Phases of Agile and DevOps Lifecycle 4.  How has the Journey from Agile to DevOps helped Businesses? 5.  Significance of DevOps CI/CD Implementation in today’s Agile Environment 6.  Major Software Testing Types for Successful DevOps CI/CD Implementation 7.  Conclusion 8.  How Can TestingXperts (Tx) help?

Overview of Agile and DevOps Methodologies

agile and DevOps methodologies

Agile Methodology

It is a software testing methodology that is guided by certain principles stated in the agile manifesto for software development. This methodology follows an incremental/iterative approach, and the main aim of this approach is to deliver quality software. It also involves continuous collaboration between stakeholders and teams and ensures continuous improvement of product’s quality. Moreover, in this approach, the software is developed and tested in small stages known as sprints, and each sprint varies from 1-3 weeks.

DevOps Methodology

This methodology aims to break traditional silos between cross-functional teams in the waterfall model. It is an evolution from agile methodology and is an enterprise software development and testing approach that emphasizes collaboration and communication between cross-functional teams. This approach involves continuous development, continuous integration, continuous testing, continuous delivery, and continuous monitoring processes to ensure faster releases and high-quality software.

Agile Vs DevOps Methodologies – Detailed Comparison

Agile vs DevOps Methodologies

Area of difference
Agile Methodology
DevOps Methodology
The main purpose of the methodology This methodology helps teams to manage projects easily by involving the stakeholders in the SDLC. Customer feedback and suggestion helps developers and testers to improve the product quality. This methodology helps to break traditional silos that earlier existed between cross-functional teams and encourages team members to work in close collaboration with each other with a faster feedback loop.
Delivery Product is delivered in increments after the completion of each sprint (one sprint usually lasts for 1-3 weeks). The goal is to provide continuous delivery of products by enabling CI/CD pipeline.
Teams This methodology focuses on keeping the teams small. It includes people with similar skill sets in one team. In this methodology, team size is relatively bigger as it combines cross-functional teams into one team and ensures seamless collaboration between teams.
Feedback Focuses on customer feedback and ensures quality product delivery. Feedbacks are gathered from internal teams and stakeholders that help to improve and speed up the product delivery.
Tools Kanboard, JIRA, Slack, Trello, Bugzilla, etc. Git, Puppet, AWS, OpenStack, Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes, etc.

Various Phases of Agile and DevOps Lifecycle

various phases of the agile and DevOps lifecycle

Agile Lifecycle Phases
DevOps Lifecycle Phases
1. Requirements – It involves planning and gathering all initial requirements like product features, functionalities, expected results, etc., that are necessary for starting the agile software development and testing process. 1. Continuous Development – This phase involves planning the requirements and coding the software.
2. Design – In this phase, architectural design and the visual design of the software is finalized 2. Continuous Integration – In this phase, the developer frequently commits changes to the source code daily or weekly. Bugs in the source code are detected early, and new codes with more functionalities are integrated into the software. Also, teams (developer & testers) use various tools for unit testing, code review, integration testing, compilation, and packaging.
3. Development and Coding – It involves writing the code and converting the design into actual software 3. Continuous Testing – In this phase, the developed software is tested for bugs. The test environment is simulated by leveraging Docker containers. It also involves UAT testing along with other types of tests. The teams leverage continuous testing tools like TestNG, Selenium, JUnit, etc.
4. Integration and Testing – This stage involves integrating the various components of the software. The software is then tested to ensure it is bug-free and works as expected. With iteration, the testing becomes wider in scope and involves integration, interoperability, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), etc. 4. Continuous Feedback- It involves gathering feedback from the developers, operations team, and end-users/stakeholders which helps in improving the quality of the software.
5. Implementation and Deployment- The software is deployed on the server and delivered to the customers for a demo or actual use as a part of the UAT. 5. Continuous Monitoring – It is essential to continuously monitor the software’s performance to ensure all the functionalities work properly. Some of the continuous monitoring tools used in this process are Nagios, Splunk, Sensu, etc.
6. Review – Once all the previous steps are completed, the product owner reviews the progress. The product is then launched into the market after the complete satisfaction of the stakeholder. 6. Continuous Deployment – In this methodology, the code is continuously deployed to the production servers. Some of the configuration management tools include Chef, Puppet, Ansible, etc., and containerization tools like Docker, Kubernetes, Ant Maven, etc., that can be used during this process.
7. Continuous Operation – This step aims to automate the process of releasing the application and the subsequent updates. Development cycles in continuous operations are shorter, which allows developers to accelerate the time-to-market continuously.
8. Continuous Delivery- This is the final stage of the entire process that automates the process of deploying new builds into the production. The goal of this phase is to perform automated testing on each build and verify the build that is ready for production. It involves automatic provisioning and configuration of the test environment as well as testing of these environments. It deploys a new release into production post all bugs get fixed

How has the Journey from Agile to DevOps helped Businesses?

agile and devops Journey

In 2001, the agile manifesto had its birth which gave rise to the agile methodology. This manifesto contained certain values and principles that guide developers and testers to break the project into smaller parts, accelerate feedback loops and align product features with customer needs. The early adopters of agile methodology were small software start-ups that were eager to disrupt the market and were willing to take the risk. As this methodology matured, large enterprises started adopting it. The agile approach worked fine for some time as it helped developers to produce software in smaller parts. But later, it was realized that it lacks the capability of continuous testing and continuous delivery.

Due to the rising need for faster releases, high-quality software and faster time-to-market, businesses needed advanced methodologies such as DevOps processes. Companies started shifting from Agile to DevOps methodology as it helped them in many ways as listed below:

1. Breaks silos between cross-functional teams, thus enabling more collaboration 2. Allows teams to continuously test and improve the code thus ensuring the software fits customer needs 3. Ensures continuous delivery of the product by enabling a CI/CD pipeline 4. Helps businesses to improve overall organizational culture and ensures early-to-market with faster and continuous releases

Significance of DevOps CI/CD Implementation in today’s Agile Environment

DevOps CICD implementation

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD), wherein a modern software coding philosophy allows developers to implement small changes and check code frequently. The main goal of CI is to establish a consistent and automated way to build, package, and test applications. CD is closely related to CI and enables automation of the entire software delivery process by leveraging automation tools. Further, it commits and delivers the integrated code into the production stage without any bugs or delays.

Both CI and CD are the backbone of today’s DevOps environment. There are various benefits that businesses can leverage by implementing the DevOps CI/CD pipeline.

• Helps in early bug detection –

Automated tests enabled by implementing CI/CD pipeline helps to detect bugs early in the SDLC.

• Improves the software quality –

Faster bug detection ensures faster bug-fixing and ultimately helps to ensure secure and reliable software.

• Ensures faster time-to-market-

Enabling CI/CD pipelines helps to increase the speed of software delivery considerably. It further helps businesses to reach the market faster and achieve a competitive edge.

• Allows faster feedback –

Typically, for any changes committed to the code, tests are run simultaneously, which helps to avoid any link breakage. Faster feedback through CI tools helps to check and improve the product quality.

• Provides greater visibility –

The CI/D pipelines give greater visibility of the entire DevOps process. This helps teams analyze the processes of software build, test results, and issues effectively.

• Automation saves QA teams time and efforts –

Automated CI/CD pipelines frees up team members so that they can focus on more important tasks and innovation. This ultimately saves their time and testing efforts.

Evidently, for businesses to reap complete benefits, they should embark on scalable CI/CD DevOps implementations by leveraging various software testing methods.

Major Software Testing Types for Successful DevOps CI/CD Implementation

Major software testing types for successful DevOps CICD

1. Test automation in DevOps-

Test automation is the backbone of the DevOps process. Therefore, businesses must leverage automated testing using various open-source and commercial tools to ensure continuous testing and the continuous delivery of software.

2. Security Testing –

This methodology lays a strong emphasis on security. Businesses must leverage security testing to safeguard software from threats and vulnerabilities.

3. Performance Testing –

To ensure software delivers a great CX even under heavy loads, businesses must leverage performance testing. This testing method helps businesses to improve the performance and load handling capacity of the software.

4. Accessibility testing –

Businesses must also leverage accessibility testing to ensure equal access to apps for all users, including people with certain disabilities like hearing impaired, impaired vision, cognitive limitations, etc.

5. Usability Testing –

Businesses need to ensure that the apps have an easy-to-use interface and proper navigation for enabling a great CX. To achieve seamless apps, businesses must leverage usability testing.

Conclusion

Businesses are rapidly moving towards DevOps methodology for various reasons. Firstly, it is an evolution from agile methodology thus making it easier for today’s businesses to adopt it. Secondly, this methodology allows businesses to reach the market faster and improve organizational culture. Lastly, it ensures great customer satisfaction, which is the need of the hour for all businesses. Businesses must leverage test automation in DevOps from the next-gen QA and independent software testing services provider for successful DevOps implementation and faster delivery of high-quality products.

How Can TestingXperts (Tx) help?

software testing services - testingxperts

TestingXperts (Tx) has been at the forefront in enabling test automation in DevOps services using the latest software test automation tools and also with an in-house accelerator, ‘Tx-Automate.’ Our test automation services best support business objectives by enabling an effective test automation strategy that is aligned with enterprise’s business goals.

Our Differentiators:


Certified automation experts with expertise in implementing advanced automation frameworks with 500+ testers
Standardized processes, templates, and toolkits for Agile and DevOps QA
A global team of QA professionals with a capability to scale up at both onsite and offshore
Dedicated DevOps expert teams ensure scalable, secure, and reliable testing services
Ensure automation with deployments and rollbacks performed in a click with low risks and high productivity
Deliver hassle-free project management with flexible engagement models
Recommend the best DevOps toolchain that best suits your project model
Focus closely on user security and protection
Expertise in industry-leading test automation (UFT, Selenium, TestComplete, Coded UI, etc.), Agile development tools (Rally, Scrumdo), and CI/CD tools ( Jenkins, Chef, Puppet, TFS, Hudson, Go, Bamboo, etc.), providing DevOps lifecycle automation
Enable continuous support and training for client teams

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A Seven-Step Approach to Enterprise DevOps Transformation https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/enterprise-devops-transformation-approach/gb-en?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-seven-step-approach-to-enterprise-devops-transformation Wed, 11 Aug 2021 14:07:56 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=20301 Enterprise DevOps Transformation-

Today, enterprises must adopt the technological changes and implement them to survive and grow in a highly competitive market space. DevOps is an evolution of the agile methodology and has many more benefits. However, enterprises should follow some specific steps to achieve seamless DevOps transformation and gain significant results. Read this blog to know more.

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Enterprise DevOps Transformation-

Today, businesses must adopt changes and implement them to survive and grow in a highly volatile market at the earliest in their organisations. Interestingly, small-scale companies or start-ups in the United Kingdom can easily adapt to these changes, while large-scale enterprises may face difficulties in adapting and implementing these changes.But, it is inevitable for businesses of all sizes to adapt to the new trends of digital transformation and DevOps methodologies to beat the competition.

To achieve a seamless DevOps transformation in their enterprise and gain significant results, businesses in the UK should follow specific steps. Even before highlighting the DevOps transformation steps, let us understand about DevOps methodology.

What is DevOps Transformation?

DevOps  transformation

DevOps is an evolution from agile methodology and is an enterprise transformation approach. It aims to break traditional silos that earlier existed between cross-functional teams. This methodology brings the developer teams, operation teams, QA teams together. It puts individuals, processes, and products together to help organisations release high-quality software faster than the earlier traditional approaches. DevOps transformation is said to play a key role in achieving successful digital transformation for today’s enterprises.

What does enterprise DevOps Transformation mean?

enterprise DevOps transformation

Enterprise DevOps transformation is a process wherein enterprises reshape their organisational strategy and bring positive cultural change by implementing DevOps practices and breaking traditional silos. DevOps processes with CI, continuous testing, and continuous delivery results in improving business processes and ensures faster software delivery.

DevOps practices are combined with advanced technologies such as Artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to bring more agility in teams and speed up the software delivery process in the enterprises DevOps transformation journey.

Seven-Step approach for Enterprise DevOps Transformation in the UK

devops transformation approach

1. Plan strategically as a first key step

Planning and preparation

Before starting the agile and DevOps transformation process, it is essential to prepare a DevOps transformation plan. The plan should cover all aspects of the transformation journey and guide teams to move ahead in the transformation process.  

At this stage, it is essential to ensure that the goals and objectives of the transformation are communicated across the organisation; teams should be assured of management support in the challenges ahead, and transparency across teams. Securing and gaining trust from individuals is critical for the success of the DevOps transformation process as it considerably reduces the chances of resistance.

2. Establish DevOps Centre of Excellence (DCoE)

DevOps Excellence

DevOps Centre of Excellence (DCoE) is a shared platform where DevOps practitioners share their experiences and learn from each other. The DevOps CoE must include representatives from all delivery teams and vendor organisations. It should be led by an enterprise leader who has support from all levels in the organisation. It is preferred to have an experienced external partner to conduct the initial phases of CoE. This DevOps transformation takes a time of 12-24 months to ensure the complete transition.

3. Build a culture of learning and collaboration in the enterprise

enterprise devops transformation

DevOps brings a change in the business processes, and the organisational culture is more prone to resistance from employees. This sudden change can also cause some temporary strain to some parts of the business. Still, it can effectively be addressed by building a culture of inclusion, boosting the morale of individuals & teams, and ensuring collaboration between teams. It is more likely that with agile and DevOps transformation, practitioner’s roles and responsibilities will change. Thus, teams should be provided with an ideal organisational culture and learning environment that empowers them and fosters a collaborative environment. However, businesses must note that cultural change has to happen from the top down.

4. Set up DevOps KPIs and governing mechanism

DevOps KPIs

At this stage, organisation must streamline their business processes, align communication channels to achieve successful DevOps transformation. Enterprises must establish DevOps Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to govern the culture of the enterprise.

The organisational culture typically needs effective governance, and this is where governing principles come into the picture. Governing principles or DevOps KPIs ensures safe and effective DevOps transformation. Enterprises must set the roles and responsibilities of DevOps practitioners, share awareness about team collaboration to empower teams.

5. Conduct workshops for scrum teams

devops scrum teams

This step plays a vital role in the DevOps transformation journey. It is essential to conduct workshops for the scrum teams with the help of subject matter experts (SMEs) to ensure the right sizing of tools and processes. At this stage, enterprises must look at their existing tools and technologies to identify which tools will work for the organisation, and action can be taken accordingly. Further, this step also ensures that selecting tools, accelerators, and methods is more purposeful and help teams realize the DevOps goals. As the DevOps process moves, the intake process can be altered based on the need and further evolved according to the needs and feedback from experts.

6. Run the pilot program and compare results with KPIs

Devbops Services

At this stage, the DevOps practitioners identify the right applications and domains to apply DevOps practices. The identified portfolio should be such that it can be scaled up to the enterprise level. The right way to execute this step is to apply the pilot projects according to the domains of the development process.

Ensure that all the details needed to run an end-to-end process such as toolset, personnel, manual, and automated testing processes are all set ready. Run the pilot test and compare results with KPIs to measure the level of success.

7. Gather feedback and scale-out DevOps program

DevOps Transformation services

The last and final step is to gather feedback from the pilot tests’ metrics and scale them through multiple releases across different application portfolios. Since DevOps is not a one-time process, it is essential to ensure continuous feedback, optimisation, and continuous deployment throughout the DevOps transformation journey.

Conclusion

Digital transformation and DevOps have become the core elements for today’s enterprises in the United Kingdom. DevOps practices have completely reinvented the way businesses deliver the product to the customer enabling a great user experience. With the help of DevOps, enterprises can deliver high-quality products to the customer faster than ever. However, it is quite challenging for enterprises to completely transform their existing business processes and adopt DevOps.

Therefore, to ensure a successful DevOps transformation process, enterprises should build effective DevOps transformation strategy, follow step-wise DevOps transformation approaches, and lay out a proper DevOps transformation roadmap. Businesses in the UK must seek the help of DevOps transformation services providers to start their DevOps transformation journey and achieve quality results tailored for the UK market.

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DevOps – A Detailed Overview for Businesses https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/what-is-devops?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=devops-a-detailed-overview-for-businesses Thu, 18 Jun 2020 13:51:10 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=15885 DevOps

Content 1. What is DevOps? 2. Emergence of DevOps Methodology – ‘Better Collaboration Between Teams’ 3. Why Should Businesses Adopt DevOps? 4. What are the Benefits of DevOps? 5. What are DevOps Lifecycle Phases? 6. Related Technologies and Practices 7. What are the Tools Used in DevOps? 8. Role of DevOps Engineer 9. Conclusion What … Continue reading "DevOps – A Detailed Overview for Businesses"

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DevOps

Content 1. What is DevOps? 2. Emergence of DevOps Methodology – ‘Better Collaboration Between Teams’ 3. Why Should Businesses Adopt DevOps? 4. What are the Benefits of DevOps? 5. What are DevOps Lifecycle Phases? 6. Related Technologies and Practices 7. What are the Tools Used in DevOps? 8. Role of DevOps Engineer 9. Conclusion

What is DevOps?

What is DevOps

DevOps is an evolution from the agile model and is an enterprise software development approach aimed at enabling collaboration between Development and IT Operations. This is an effective collaboration of people, process and working product that enables continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) of value to end users.

This DevOps methodology ensures development and operations teams to improve collaboration and facilitates better coordination among them. Primarily, a DevOps engineer works with different IT teams such as operations, development and testing functions by automating and streamlining the CI/CD and deployment processes.

With this modern code deployment approach, the development team submits the application to the operations team for implementation; and the operations team monitors the application to provide the relevant feedback. This methodology helps to accelerate the application delivery by minimizing the risks with continuous delivery and delivers effective feedback with faster and quality releases.

Emergence of DevOps Methodology – ‘Better Collaboration Between Teams’

DevOps Methodology

DevOps is popularly considered as a culture more than a methodology in software development. With the traditional waterfall model, it was difficult for the teams to meet the ever-changing demands of the new IT products with connected devices.

Though the software requirements were well-defined at the earliest, this sequential model failed to deploy the applications faster and could not give efficient results as software testing was done at the end of the development. This effectively lead to the evolution of Agile Methodology.

An agile model is an iterative approach to software development and it focuses on customer feedback, collaboration, and rapid releases. This methodology serves best to address the gaps and ensures good communication between the product owner and developer teams. Though there are many benefits with this model, however, development and operation teams still find some challenges that are well addressed in DevOps. This methodology ensures faster code deployment to production with faster releases and also ensures speed of application delivery with faster time-to-market.

Why Should Businesses Adopt DevOps?

Devops

Today’s businesses are moving towards DevOps to overcome the challenges of growing competition with ever-increasing user expectations. This methodology helps in breaking down the traditional silos and ensures speed and responsiveness to production with proper customer feedback. The DevOps practice essentially ensures frequent communication and collaboration between teams as they continue to work hand-in-hand.

With this software delivery approach, businesses can easily automate the regular IT operations with the code development process and combine the workflows of both the teams from the initial design phase till production.

Along with this DevOps, businesses are embedding many technologies such as blockchain infrastructure, distributed databases, Big Data analytics, serverless computing, etc. as businesses continue to shift towards digital business. Evidently, DevOps is the solution to run the businesses with rapid innovation, less time to market, and be sure to get quality applications.

Thus, the implementation of DevOps with the best workflow, test automation and effective practices helps businesses to achieve huge benefits. Some of the benefits include to enable better organizational culture, to enhance the software lifecycle predictability, along with saving considerable time and money by leveraging software test automation.

What are the Benefits of DevOps?

DevOps has emerged as a superior method to deliver quality software faster by decreasing the development lifecycle and maintaining business objectives.

Some of the benefits are:

Devops Benefits

1. Speed:

Assures and delivers the highest business value and faster delivery time with an effective software development process in place.

2. Improved Collaboration:

Enhances the collaboration between QA, Development and Operation teams with more engaged teams and breaks down silos.

3. Cross-Skilling:

Facilitates opportunity for cross-skilling and self-improvement of various teams.

4. Reliability:

Ensures better quality application updates and infrastructure changes which further ensures reliable software delivery at a more rapid pace.

5. Faster Bug Identification:

DevOps processes help identify and resolve the fixes at the earliest with faster identification of defects.

6. Release on Demand:

Assures to compete with present business market and customer needs with continuous releases and continuous deployments.

7. Manage at Scale:

Enables to operate and manage infrastructure and development processes at scale. It becomes far easier to manage and deploy and test through multiple environments for multiple teams.

8. Security:

DevOps model can be adopted without sacrificing security by using automated compliance policies and other configuration management techniques.

What are DevOps Lifecycle Phases?

devops services

The lifecycle of DevOps works involves various stages such as continuous development, continuous integration, continuous testing, and continuous deployment.

1. Continuous Development:

Devops Continuous Development

This phase focuses on the planning and coding of the application. The vision of the project is decided and then the code is developed for the application. There is no restriction for the code language, thus the code can be in any language. Once the code is developed, it is moved to the next continuous integration phase.

2. Continuous Integration:

Continuous Integration

In this stage, the developer frequently commits changes to the source code. And, the new code that supports the latest functionalities is continuously integrated with the source code. As the development is continuous, it becomes essential to integrate and update the code continuously. This specific way of continuous integration helps to achieve the changes faster.

3. Continuous Testing:

Continuous Testing

In this stage, the developed software is constantly tested with the help of Test automation tools to identify defects. This implies running existing regression suites and continuously adding test cases to that in order to cater to the new functionalities being added. It helps in ensuring that there are no functionality breaks while new features are being added.

4. Continuous Deployment:

Devops Continuous Deployment

In this stage, configuration management tools and/or containerization tools are used to deploy to the test or production infrastructure. Configuration management tools help to establish and maintain the app’s functional and performance requirements. Specifically, containerization tools help to manage consistency in development, test, and production environments. With the help of these tools, the code is deployed on the test/production servers in this phase..

5. Continuous Monitoring:

Devops Continuous Monitoring

This is the last stage in the DevOps lifecycle, and in this stage, the performance of the software is constantly monitored. The errors related to functionality, low memory, and app performance are effectively monitored with the help of continuous monitoring tools. This may also involve using Infrastructure monitoring tools provided by individual Cloud providers.

Related Technologies and Practices

Devops technologies

Containerization:

Containerization involves the packaging of application along with its libraries, frameworks, and configuration files together such that it can be run in various environments. Today, Docker is the most popular platform that provides for containerization. Containers are becoming an integral part of standard DevOps architecture. DevOps and Docker image management technologies have made it easy for developers and IT operation teams to share software and collaborate easily which further leads to enhanced productivity.

DevSecOps:

Security is an ever-existing requirement for businesses. DevSecOps is the integration of Security testing within the DevOps framework. Thus with DevSecOps, security will be infused throughout the software development lifecycle thus eliminating vulnerabilities as soon as possible in the software life cycle.

MicroServices:

Microservices are often concomitant technology. With micro-services, it is easier for the DevOps teams to increase the speed and agility as individual teams can focus on single functions. Also, micro-services protect the elements from breakage, isolate the defects, and help in fixing them.

Container Registry:

This technology has also become a crucial need for the DevOps teams while working with microservices and containerized applications. The container registry is the collection of repositories that helps in storing container images. A few of the top container registries are Docker Hub, Azure Container Registry and Google Container Registry.

What are the Tools Used in DevOps?

Some of the commonly used tools in DevOps have been divided into different categories and mentioned in alphabetical order:

DevOps tools

1. Artifact Repositories:

These are repositories of binaries, libraries, DLLs, third party components that may be built using internal or external source code repositories. Some of the commonly used tools in this category are JFrog Artifactory, Nexus Repository.

2. Configuration Management Tools:

This category includes the provisioning and configuration of a server or an environment. It involves the practice of provisioning infrastructure, managing and automating the configurations of various software applications. Some of the tools that come under this category are ansible, terraform, Saltstack, Packer.io.

3. Orchestration Tools:

Orchestration involves automating workflow processes to build, test, deliver and deploy software services. These may be tools installed and managed by the software development teams themselves or maybe SaaS (Software as a Service) based tools. Some of the common tools under this category are Jenkins, CircleCI, Azure DevOps etc.

4. Source Code Repository:

This source code repository refers to the place or hub where the developer’s check-in and change code. This repository effectively manages the versions of the code that are checked in by the developer teams. The tools may be central repository based or more often distributed version control systems. Some of the commonly used tools that come under this category are git, Subversion, and TFS.

5. Test Automation Tools:

An important aspect of DevOps is integration with automated testing within the pipeline. Automated testing ensures faster releases and at the same time delivers quality. Some of the popular tools that come under this category are AccelQ, Tricentis Tosca, Selenium.

6. Virtual Infrastructure:

There are many cloud vendors (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) that sell infrastructure or Platform as a Service (PaaS). The cloud vendors make available APIs that allows programmatically creating new virtual machines or other infrastructure components using some configuration management tools already mentioned above. Some of the service providers under this category are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Role of DevOps Engineer

DevOps is gaining steady demand in IT organizations. The combination of ‘development’ and ‘operations’ is proving to be a huge success. DevOps is contributing to swift software development along with improved team collaboration and efficiency.

The DevOps teams with DevOps engineers perform many activities and ensures faster and quality releases along with ensuring the early market of the product.

The role of the DevOps Engineer is as follows:

The need for having decent soft skills are critical for a DevOps engineer. As a mediator between the development team and operations team, they communicate with the teams and helps solve problems if any through the support of other team members

DevOps engineers have the good technical know-how on certain key tools that fall under source control version, continuous integration, infrastructure automation, deployment automation and containerization and thus helps DevOps teams in enabling quality releases

The DevOps engineer helps develop specific security mechanisms that not only monitor the on-going activities but also safeguard the system infrastructure from any potential threats.

A DevOps engineer helps in handling automation tools. It becomes the responsibility of the DevOps engineer to coordinate with teams at any point right from the requirements gathering stage till the deployment stage. Infrastructure also needs to be automated with the help of the specific DevOps teams

Apart from automation, a DevOps engineer is responsible for implementing testing techniques. The main reason being automation and testing are interlinked, and hence it becomes essential for the DevOps engineer to handle the automation and testing activities to ensure faster releases and at the same time quality releases.

Conclusion

DevOps has evolved as an extension of agile methodology and enables effective collaboration between developers and IT operation teams and breaks silos that existed in earlier models. DevOps methodology has many benefits such as ensures team collaboration, speed of delivery, reliability, security ensured with effective test automation practices.

DevOps facilitates modern enterprises to maintain consistency, to innovate rapidly, deliver customer-centric software with enhanced time-to-market. TestingXperts can provide DevOps consulting and implementations services so that you can do an effective rollout of this methodology in your organization.

 

Related Queries on DevOps

Q1. What is meant by DevOps?

Ans. DevOps is an evolution from the agile model and is an enterprise software development approach aimed at enabling collaboration between Development and IT Operations.

Q2. What are the DevOps tools?

Ans. Some of the commonly used tools in DevOps are test automation tools, Configuration Management Tools, Virtual Infrastructure tools etc. Click here to read more.

Q3. Is DevOps a technology?

Ans. Devops technology ensures faster code deployment to production with faster releases and also ensures speed of application delivery with faster time-to-market.

Q4. Is DevOps a framework?

DevOps framework enhances the collaboration between QA, Development and Operation teams with more engaged teams and breaks down silos.

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Continuous Testing: Because DevOps and Impatient Customers matter https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/Continuous-Testing-Because-DevOps-and-Impatient-Customers-matter?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=continuous-testing-because-devops-and-impatient-customers-matter Mon, 11 Sep 2017 13:44:00 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=9093 continuous testing

In a world where everyone is running at a breakneck speed, the slow-motion era of conventional testing will just not hold ground, any more. Step into the power of Continuous Testing and be a sharp enterprise. Contents 1. Continuous testing and Devops World 2. Enters Dev, Shakes Ops 3. Benefits of Continuous Testing and Devops … Continue reading "Continuous Testing: Because DevOps and Impatient Customers matter"

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continuous testing

In a world where everyone is running at a breakneck speed, the slow-motion era of conventional testing will just not hold ground, any more. Step into the power of Continuous Testing and be a sharp enterprise.

Contents 1. Continuous testing and Devops World 2. Enters Dev, Shakes Ops 3. Benefits of Continuous Testing and Devops 4. Shift to continuous testing

 

Continuous testing and Devops World

 

Before we knew it, the rise of an app-economy, fierce consumerization of technology, the arrival of digital natives and penetration of new technological marvels in everyday lives have strongly changed the way products and services are expected, consumed and forgotten. It’s a strange new-world where a company must be digitally-nimble and be there for a customer – every time and at any time.

Now in this app-stirred world, isn’t it fascinating that the rate of churn of new software is so fast today that to test it effectively in itself has become an onerous and slippery task? At the same time, can we ignore that in 2016, software failures have culminated into losses as huge as $1.1 trillion?

Let’s face it.

1. Always-on Users: Today’s customers are born into technology and there’s no weaning them away from the 24/7 and always-available services they have gotten used to. Enterprises and CTOs may find this problem a new beast altogether, since the digitally-born rivals are miles ahead in serving customers with jaw-dropping speed and an absolutely-robust grip on the pulse of the new-age customer.

2. Time to rethink the Status-Quo: There is no way that snail-paced, Luddite and bureaucracy-driven methods of building and testing apps can survive in this blistering world where apps come and go before you blink an eye.

How can you ensure that while your developers are trying to tune in to this new race, you also manage to have your QA and testing team ensure that the apps and offerings you put on your customer’s plate are not only dished out fast, but they also get a thumbs-up on quality and utility?

It’s a dilemma-dotted scenario where apps have to be continuously built, deployed, tested and released, but at the same time, IT can leave no room for any mistakes when it comes to defects, risks and usability issues.

continuous integration

 

Enters Dev, Shakes Ops

DevOps and the rise of Micro-services have prodded the Dev professionals into always being on their toes. However, the Ops side had to come and rub their shoulders too, without slugging behind.

That has engendered a very relevant and clever genre of testing, making businesses and testers re-imagine everything they took granted so far.

 

Benefits of Continuous Testing and Devops

 

1. It allows the software delivery pipeline to gather feedback that is immediate, continuous and actionable; and helps the business to be pre-emptive with risks around a software release.

2. One can sync in QA testing with Dev and Ops processes in an optimized, proactive and seamless way and hence put a tick-box on both business and development goals.

3. Now Dev sprints can find Ops and QA folks running side by side and both can ensure adequate quality, proper and effective coverage for frequent builds of the modern-day app-economies.

4. Since the onset of Agile development methodology and the app-economy era that came close on its heels, enterprises have been struggling to make sure QA is not miles behind the nimble and super-fast Dev processes that are almost status-quo now. With Continuous Testing, one can pull in a systematic approach, sturdy process improvement, and integration of QA into skate-board-strapped Dev and Ops processes; but, also be relaxed regarding the continuity that is fundamental and critical for faster development cycles.

5. Think of a new paradigm of automated tests. More organizations can now be seen embracing automated acceptance tests too. During the commit stage, these tests are being deployed and the range spans from functional to non-functional criteria while guarding against regression and ensuring overall business value as expected by the customer. These tests may spot errors that may be beyond the grip of unit and component tests as well. Interestingly, these acceptance tests are customer-facing unlike unit tests that are usually developer-facing. That’s a quantum leap for enterprises today that are fighting the relentless challenge of being relevant for digitally-savvy and always-on customers.

6. The context of a production-like environment is another highlight of these kinds of tests. Smart use of a risk-based testing approach will be a major accelerator for many enterprises here. With such tools and an evolved state of automation, enterprises can be assured of continuity in testing, and at the same time, confident about precise risk-assessment and mitigation insights that pour in at the right time to the right person.

7. Core automation is passé but in a continuous testing, adequate risk-based impact analysis comes to the forefront. Nowadays experts in the field are also offering a layered approach that entails test implementation layer and application driver layer. This helps the code to cover interaction with application to perform actions and test results. So much so that any small change in an application’s source code, configuration, environment or data can spur a new instance in the pipeline altogether.

continuous testing service

Let’s remind ourselves that in this agile-app, fast-economy and tech-fuelled world, the age of monolithic and flabby software testing is over. Now is the time for the lean and the mean to jump in. Innovation and agility are no more longer in SDLC today, and conventional software testing cannot furnish the visibility, responsiveness, scope and endurance that the new age demands.

Shift to Continuous Testing

A shift to Continuous Testing is a no-brainer if you want to keep your customers happy with services run from robust, dependable, maintainable and automated suites as integral and easy parts of the lifecycle.

The certainty of providing the best user experience – one high on comfort and still free of defects needs a mindset switch – Test early, test faster, test often and test continuously.

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How DevOps can Boost Security of your Applications https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/How-DevOps-can-Boost-Security-of-your-Applications?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-devops-can-boost-security-of-your-applications Tue, 29 Aug 2017 13:55:54 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=9059 DevOps Boost Security of your Applications

With the explosion of high-profile hacks, ransomware, and data breaches, it’s common to feel insecure about your organization’s information security these days. As your infrastructure grows and diversifies, you have to protect your organization and its reputation like never before. In this blog, we will display how your organization can follow DevOps testing approach to … Continue reading "How DevOps can Boost Security of your Applications"

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DevOps Boost Security of your Applications

With the explosion of high-profile hacks, ransomware, and data breaches, it’s common to feel insecure about your organization’s information security these days. As your infrastructure grows and diversifies, you have to protect your organization and its reputation like never before. In this blog, we will display how your organization can follow DevOps testing approach to boost security.

Contents 1. Latest Security Hacks and breaches 2. TestingXperts’ Security Testing Approach: ‘Tx-Secure’ (TestingXperts’ Security Testing Framework) 3. DevOps practices that can help in improving security

 

Latest Security Hacks and breaches

 

You don’t have to go far to see the cost of data breaches. In fact, 2017 has been one of the worst years to experience two big ransomware in a row. ‘WannaCry’ and ‘Petya’ are the two most prominent ransomware attacks that shook the entire world.

– WannaCry swept Asia and Europe rapidly, locking up critical systems such as the UK’s National Health Service, a huge telecom company in Spain, and other such businesses and institutions around the world, all in the fastest time. If reports are to be believed, the motive of WannaCry ransomware was not to make money but to produce a random disruption across the globe. This massive cyber-attack has hit at least 150 countries and infected 300,000 machines. The victims included universities, hospitals, manufacturers and government agencies in countries like China, Britain, Germany, Russia, and Spain.

– Petya, another recent cyber-attack hit companies across the USA and Europe. Petya was publicized to be more deadly than the ‘WannaCry’ cyber attack. With Petya, the victims were unable to unlock their computers in spite of paying the ransom. Petya attack impacted various services, and industries and Ukraine had turned out to be the epicenter of this attack. The Petya attack impacted companies across all sectors such as pharmaceuticals, shipping, hospitals, law firms and much more.

 

TestingXperts’ Security Testing Approach: ‘Tx-Secure’ (TestingXperts’ Security Testing Framework)

 

After all these incidents, it is evident that such attacks will not stop but only grow.  Companies and individuals today are under extreme pressure to build software/applications that are thoroughly tested for their security and are, at the same time, competent enough to alert users against any possible cyber-attack. TestingXperts’ homegrown security testing framework ‘Tx-Secure’ has built test accelerators and knowledge repository, using multiple open source and commercial tools, latest industry standards (OWASP, etc.) and proprietary testing methodologies. TestingXperts’ team of security experts recognize the importance of DevOps and takes it as a mindset and not a mere methodology.

DevOps reduces the gap between development and operations to speed up software delivery process and increase business agility and time-to-market. With its origins in the agile practices, DevOps promotes collaboration between teams and diminishes the gap development and operations teams and processes. DevOps as a concept understands the need for better security and ensures security precautions are built early in the cycle. Most of the practices that originate with DevOps, such as automation, collaboration, fast feedback loops, improved visibility, and more, are rich grounds for integrating security as an integrated component of DevOps processes.

Ensure security with DevSecOps

 

DevOps practices that can help in improving security

 

Given below is a list of the top five DevOps practices that can improve the overall security when integrated directly into your end-to-end continuous integration and continuous delivery pipeline:

– Collaboration – Configuration and patch management – Continuous monitoring – Security test automation – Identity management

On the Security front, TestingXperts is helping its customers determine the extent of availability and reliability of the application. TestingXperts, a frontrunner in adopting DevOps testing practices and agile methodologies, can help you automate your tests, maintain the security of your application, and achieve timely delivery schedules.

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Shift Left and Shift Right Testing Approach for Quality & Agility https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/Shift-Left-and-Shift-Right-Testing-Approach-for-Quality-and-Agility?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=shift-left-and-shift-right-testing-approach-for-quality-agility Mon, 21 Aug 2017 14:17:44 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=9046 shift left testing

In a quest to achieve quicker delivery of software, organizations are increasingly adopting the Agile development model. However, to maximize the benefits of Agile software development, testing should be executed simultaneously with development. For this reason, organizations have been adopting DevOps for the last couple of years. The adoption of DevOps has helped teams to … Continue reading "Shift Left and Shift Right Testing Approach for Quality & Agility"

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shift left testing

In a quest to achieve quicker delivery of software, organizations are increasingly adopting the Agile development model. However, to maximize the benefits of Agile software development, testing should be executed simultaneously with development. For this reason, organizations have been adopting DevOps for the last couple of years. The adoption of DevOps has helped teams to collaborate more, and implement practices such as ‘Shift-Left’ and ‘Shift Right’ testing. These practices are helping enterprises in building quality right from the beginning of the project. In this blog, we will discuss the importance of ‘shift left’ and ‘shift right’ testing approaches to ensure quality and agility.

Contents 1. Shift Left Testing Approach 2. Why shift-left? 3. What are the types of the Shift-Left Testing model? 4. Shift Right Testing Approach 5. What are the different methods of shift-right approach? 6. Why shift-right? 7. Conclusion

 

Shift Left Testing Approach

 

As the name suggests, the shift left testing approach starts to focus on testing as early as the requirements phase. Generally, the software testing process originates with static review of requirements specifications with a focus to identify and remove ambiguities in requirements and enhance the quality of requirements consumed down-stream. Shift left testing helps in identifying any defects early in the lifecycle.

The shift-left testing approach introduces testers at the primary stage of development to help them understand what requirements are being scoped and what the testability of those requirements is.  Shift left testing also helps testing teams to identify high-level test scenarios and start work on the detailed test cases.

Why shift-left?

Time and resources are saved: Shift left approach helps in finding defects earlier in the software development lifecycle, allowing resources to invest less time in finding defects, thereby increasing quality and improving efficiency.

Defects are found and fixed early: It’s very cost-effective to start identifying defects in requirements/user stories as it helps the testers to understand the testability of each requirement.

Faster product delivery: Shift-left testing streamlines the development process, thereby ensuring faster delivery.

Enhanced design: Through shift-left testing, bottlenecks, roadblocks, and possible performance failures are detected early on in the lifecycle, leading to a better design.

Improved timelines and better ROI: With the shift-left testing there is less rework, projects work according to their regular timelines and the quality is always at the top. This ensures in delivering faster to the market with improved ROI.

Thus, the shift-left testing approach is an easy and economical way of reducing the time, efforts, and cost in improving the software at a complex state.

What are the types of the Shift-Left Testing model?

– Traditional shift left testing: In this testing approach, the focus is exclusively on the unit and integration testing by using API testing and modern test tools. This approach even has a drawback as it fails to focus on system-level and acceptance testing.

– Incremental shift left testing: In this testing approach, complex developments are broken down into smaller pieces to simplify the process. This practice of allowing the smaller segments to be tested one after the other helps the segments to be built upon each other. The incremental shift-left approach is widely adopted and used in the projects that have been having high complexity in the hardware.

– Agile/DevOps: This method helps in performing testing in numerous sprints and it is widely applied for developmental testing without operational testing. The Agile/DevOps Shift Left testing has gained popularity and it is preferred widely by many enterprises.

– Model-based shift left testing: This is the latest trend in shift left testing with a concept to find bugs at the earliest. Generally, shift-left testing is practiced at the early stage of a development cycle. But, in this method, the testing approach is during the design and development phase. This includes executable requirements, architecture and design models and helps in eliminating 45-65 percent of errors introduced in these early phases.

Shift Right Testing Approach

As we all know that shift-left is critical to software quality assurance and is an essential step in ensuring quality from the start, this approach alone is not enough to maintain performance and user experience. This has resulted in organizations adopting a ‘Shift-Right’ approach. The shift right testing approach initiates the testing task from the right that means the post-production of the software. In this approach performance and usability of an application are continuously monitored and feedback is sought continuously from users to understand the user behavior.

This approach helps in launching new features in the application fast and test by simulating its behavior in production.  This is achieved by gathering continuous feedback from the users through both formal and informal communication channels.

What are the different methods of shift-right approach?

A/B Testing:

This type of testing is commonly referred to as split testing or bucket testing. In this method, various new designs of a webpage are tested against the original designs of a page. The goal of this testing type is to determine which design generates more conversions. A/B testing is a part of the Conversion Rate Optimization process where the page with variation is compared with the ones of the original page. The page that helps in achieving better conversion is considered as the winner in the challenge.

Continuous Quality Monitoring (CQM):

This approach helps in improving the system quality during any software life cycle stage. A wide range of different tools and techniques are used to monitor the quality of the application. Code instrumentation, real user monitoring, and virtual user monitoring are a few CQM techniques that are used in the software during its production phase.

Chaos Testing:

In this method of testing, errors are introduced to the system to check its functionality and recovery in error conditions. By understanding how the system responds in stress conditions, it becomes easier for a team to identify and fix the bugs. The principle of chaos testing is to verify how the system responses when sudden attacks are introduced in the infrastructure, or the application or the network. The results achieved with this practice helps in improving the overall application standard.

Why shift-right?

– Quick feedback: Shift-right approach, allows the teams to gather user feedback and incorporate them in quick succession.

– Maximum test coverage: Shift right approach to testing provides testers the freedom of testing more and testing timely. This helps in eliminating more defects at the preliminary stage and provide a better quality application.

– More automation: Automation saves time and effort. Automating large parts of the process, when features and patches are being built into the application, helps in saving time and eventually helps in providing quality at speed.

Thus, adopting a Shift right testing approach offers improved customer experience and enhanced test coverage.

Conclusion

Considering the above-stated details, both shift-left and shift-right testing approaches are equally important and help in delivering a unique and different way of testing the software application. At TestingXperts, we follow both ‘Shift-Left’ and ‘Shift-Right’ software testing approach that adequately touches each and every aspect of the application to ensure best possible quality. Connect with us and allow us to make your software ready for business quickly.

Related Queries on Shift Left and Sift Right devops

Q1. What is shift right in DevOps?

Ans: Quick feedback: Shift-right approach, allows the teams to gather user feedback and incorporate them in quick succession.

Q2: What is the difference between Left Shift and Right Shift?

Ans: Shift Left Shift and Shift Right Operators in C/C++ << (left shift) Takes two numbers, left shifts the bits of the first operand, the second operand decides the number of places to shift (right shift)

Q3: What is shift right in DevOps?

Ans: By “shift right,” people mean that they aren’t going to just throw the feature over the wall to ops when it deploys, they’re going to monitor, observe, analyze log data, and “test in production.” DevOps drew our attention to the need to keep testing even when the new changes are deployed to production

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7 Types of Tools to Make your DevOps Right – Infographic https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/7-Types-of-Tools-to-Make-your-DevOps-Right?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=7-types-of-tools-to-make-your-devops-right Tue, 18 Jul 2017 14:46:29 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=8971 tools to make you devops

DevOps has become a popular methodology of collaboration in today’s technological world. DevOps is the combination of development, operations, and QA, promoting clear communication and collaboration between individuals and teams. The differences between the developers and the operations teams are well known to all. However, with the advent of DevOps, the battle lines have been … Continue reading "7 Types of Tools to Make your DevOps Right – Infographic"

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tools to make you devops

DevOps has become a popular methodology of collaboration in today’s technological world. DevOps is the combination of development, operations, and QA, promoting clear communication and collaboration between individuals and teams. The differences between the developers and the operations teams are well known to all.

However, with the advent of DevOps, the battle lines have been erased to a certain extent. DevOps has been moving rapidly from being a concept to reality and enhancing the business impact, speed, and quality of the application delivery. Many organizations are shifting to DevOps to reach the continuous delivery stage and to achieve agility with efficiency.

 

What are the tools required for DevOps?

 

In this infographic, we will discuss the ideal set of tools to help you with your DevOps journey.

tools to make you devops infographic

Recommended for you: Accelerate Digital Transformation with DevOps

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DevSecOps – Automating Security into the Testing Process https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/DevSecOps-Automating-Security-into-the-Testing-Process?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=devsecops-automating-security-into-the-testing-process Wed, 05 Jul 2017 13:02:40 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=3230 DevSecOps and Automated Security Testing

The modern approach towards software testing has changed the traditional way of doing testing and has come a long way in making testing automated and integral. This new testing approach has allowed developers to invest more time adding value by looking at the problem areas rather than running tests by hand. Contents 1. Role of … Continue reading "DevSecOps – Automating Security into the Testing Process"

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DevSecOps and Automated Security Testing

The modern approach towards software testing has changed the traditional way of doing testing and has come a long way in making testing automated and integral. This new testing approach has allowed developers to invest more time adding value by looking at the problem areas rather than running tests by hand.

Contents 1. Role of DevSecOps 2. Automated Security Testing is the Solution 3. TestingXperts’ Solution- DevSecOps

Role of DevSecOps

After all these improvements, businesses are struggling to get security effectively integrated into the system. There are various tools available to assure security into the systems, but they are still not to the point of being the only route to test. These security and compliance issues are seen as road blocks that slow down the deployment.

According to a recent study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, people experience decision fatigue when asked to make more security decisions than are manageable. 

Security teams of all sizes receive nearly 17,000 alerts every week. This statistic represents that an organization would have to review nearly 1,700 alerts per week with 10 dedicated security personnel.

According to a study by Ponemon, On an average, 29 percent of all malware alerts received by their security operations team are investigated, and an average of 40 percent are considered to be false positives.

If security teams receive more alerts than they can address, how can we expect them to successfully find the real threat among a huge number of possible threats?

Automated Security Testing is the Solution!

Automated application security testingcan help in preventing many of the standard attacks , of which SQL injection is one of the examples. These days, an automated tool informing the DevOps team to fix a whole sea of vulnerabilities is considered to be easy than the security team doing the same thing. The burden of informing DevOps team about all the alerts can be reduced by the new automated tools that are getting better day by day.

Automation tools not only support in covering the employee time gap but also covers the skills gap. If a tool can check the whole deploy environment for your preferred cloud environment at the time of deployment, it becomes a huge relief for the testers on having complete knowledge about the security features of the given cloud environment. The overall result of automation would increase security position for the business.

DevSecOps Way to Ensure Security

TestingXperts’ Solution- DevSecOps

We all are aware of the importance of security of our organizations. We all know security does not really have the staff it needs. DevOps is the perfect solution to this puzzle. Organizations should start looking how your DevOps effort can include security. For this reason, it is important to have a reliable software security testing vendor.

TestingXperts’ team of security experts understand that DevOps is a mindset and cultural change, collaborating development and operations teams into an ongoing and seamless agile process. DevOps is not as simple as it looks, it requires perfect planning, association, and extensive tools and methodologies. TestingXperts has extensive expertise in Security Testing Services for mobile web applications and software products.

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Accelerate Digital Transformation with DevOps https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/Accelerate-Digital-Transformation-with-DevOps?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=accelerate-digital-transformation-with-devops Mon, 08 May 2017 13:02:30 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=3117 accelerate-digital-transformation-with-devops

1. What is Digital Transformation 2. DevOps and Digital Transformation 3. Steps to Accelerate DevOps with Digital Transformation 4. DevOps and Digital Transformation: Key to Business Success What is Digital Transformation Digital transformation is revolutionizing the way organizations are managing internal processes as well as delivering services to customers. Organizations in this digital age are … Continue reading "Accelerate Digital Transformation with DevOps"

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accelerate-digital-transformation-with-devops

1. What is Digital Transformation 2. DevOps and Digital Transformation 3. Steps to Accelerate DevOps with Digital Transformation 4. DevOps and Digital Transformation: Key to Business Success

What is Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is revolutionizing the way organizations are managing internal processes as well as delivering services to customers. Organizations in this digital age are more agile in adapting to change in order to innovate at the speed of business. As cloud-native enterprises use software to build new business models, disrupt, and digitally transform their respective industries, DevOps is becoming the culture to enable this change.

DevOps and Digital Transformation

DevOps has helped minimize barrier between developers and operations and made it easier for the applications to be built and deployed quickly for use. While developers focus on building modern solutions with better user experience, operations fixate on providing stability for site availability. Due to the difference in the focus of work, a gap can exist in both the departments. By adopting DevOps methodology, the conflict between developers and operations can be reduced. However, it requires a cultural shift to address the application behavior proactively rather than at the time of deployment.

The need for speed has been the key driver for DevOps adoption. In the era of digitalization, software is the source of variation, and DevOps is the key to accelerate development and delivery of software. However, not many companies have fully realized the direct connection between speeding up the DevOps implementation and accelerating the whole journey of digital transformation. If you are not able to accelerate the software testing, development, release cycles, and change management, the entire transformation schedule will hit a roadblock.

So, the question arises – How to accelerate DevOps in order to expedite the business outcomes of digital transformation. Given below are three key suggestions as an early point.

Steps to Accelerate DevOps with Digital Transformation

1. Approach DevOps from a business perspective: DevOps can help you increase business benefits such as increased revenues, improved customer experience, lower operational costs, etc.

2. Automate everything you can: All kinds of release management activities such as static code analysis, development, testing, and deployment should be automated using scripts and tools. This would greatly improve the quality of deliverable.

3. Get the precise response you need for continuous improvement:DevOps with a focus on continuous improvement can catapult a company’s capability to deliver software effectively.

Continuous Testing with Continuous Quality

DevOps and Digital Transformation: Key to Business Success

In a business environment, DevOps is the key to superior business results. If you want to expedite your journey to DevOps, you need to get proper guidance from a technology-agnostic partner with DevOps expertise on a global scale. TestingXperts’ with its matured DevOps QA practices and global experience in software testing, can help you create a QA strategy for your DevOps journey to accelerate your digital transformation.

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