Some DevOps practices like Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) support frequent software releases. That means that testing plays an integral part in helping to maintain software quality at each step of the development lifecycle.
![](https://codelido.com/assets/files/2022-12-30/1672414144-381973-image.png)
In the days of the traditional waterfall methodology, software testing looked like this:
- Spanned only one phase of the life cycle
- Started after the software was developed completely
- Was a manual process that was highly error-prone and took a long time to complete
This is what testing in a DevOps environment looks like:
- Testing is a continuous and automated process that enables continuous and faster delivery of software.
- Testing spans every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
- Each step of the SDLC involves different forms of testing. This minimizes backtracking in the case that you’ve detected an error.
- Testing is no longer the responsibility of one particular team. Shared testing responsibilities allow everyone to understand the impacts behind each change.
DevOps testing best practices:
- Leverage test automation smartly
- Identify test automation engineers
- Select the right testing tools
- Track performance with metrics
- Maintain proper documentation.