QAOps: Not just the latest buzzword but all you wanted to know

Introduction 

In this advanced innovative world where all the organizations are working towards the automation to provide the best user experience to the clients, we concentrate on providing the quality and rehearsing QAOps is responsible for Ontime delivery. Let’s check: what is QAOps? For what reason it is significant? and what DevOps is. 

DevOps — DevOps is a mix of development and IT operations. It focuses on the association of both the development and operation teams in the product development phase. Making the software development process simpler, easier, and more effective.  

The QAOps (significant center to software) ensures that product testing is a piece of the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline which is the cornerstone of DevOps approach and QA team cooperates with the development team to accomplish the necessary quality for a product. 

Overview of QAOps 

Software development processes have changed, so the role of every individual has engaged in the process. The role of QA is presently not restricted to testing. Testers are associated with each part of software development. QAOps is a preparation that brings developers, testers, and operation teams together.  

This framework was made to upgrade software delivery processes and workflows while keeping the quality of a product. CI/CT/CD (i.e., continuous integration, continuous testing, and continuous delivery) is the foundation for QAOps cycle. With QAOps, the cycle is speeding up and gives more effective outcomes. 

Why QAOps matters for an organization? 

QAOps, which follows the DevOps approach, makes the software development cycle faster as well as smoother. With faster software development cycles, the team will have more opportunity to work on additional features and to update them, and it will give a clear picture of the testing system, and this will assist them with fixing bugs quicker and release the product earlier. 

  It prevents the QA team from delaying until the application is fit to be tested again. This aide the QA team recognize issues at early stages and fixing these issues as soon as possible.  

An association needs three extraordinary QAOPs cycle to rehearse: 

• The tests ought to be triggered just dependent on the progressions that are made to the functionality. Subsequently, the triggered step ought to be very much arranged and planned with the automation testing life cycle 

• Various tests will be executed on the functionality which will execute the interaction as arranged with no hiccups during the QAOps life cycle. 

• When the tests are triggered and executed, the revealing module features the results of the tests.  

QAOps Implementation in Testing Models 

Basically, QAOps checks the quality, and it reduces testing time and costs, which makes teams to come up with the better products for users. The QAOps process says it is important for the development of most test models. 

Automated Testing – It is the focal precept of QAOps and most reliable testing method to provide the frequent testing feedback which satisfies the prerequisites of a successful QAOps setup. 

Parallel Testing – It includes executing cases of similar tests, various tests, or any blend thereof across a huge number of target browsers and/or operating systems. QAOps framework can speed up the testing within a similar delivery pipeline within the timeframe. 

Scalability Testing – It helps in characterizing the performance of the application in various conditions by changing the testing loads. The QAOps team, in this method, needs access to the scalability framework and play out the necessary tests to speed up the test speed with each progression. 

Functional Exploratory Testing – It is a kind of ad-hoc testing that can be utilized in organization when a basic application must be tested and there are capable analyzers in the team. Experienced test engineers replicate the potential application crash situations and uncover the bugs utilizing this procedure. This testing ensures assuming the application is running as expected when met with unexpected situation.  

Regression Testing – It proves to be useful when after the software is developed and delivered, you really want updates in the current structure and once again release the product on the market.  

Smoke Testing- It helps in distinguishing the steadiness of a deployed build. If modules don’t work, testing is stopped to prevent developers from introducing a broken test build. 

Integrating Dev & Ops with QA – Communication between QA engineers, technical team members, stakeholders make the entire process of product development, testing, and support more efficient.  

Life Cycle of QAOps Framework 

The QAOps process can be accomplished by the three stages – Trigger, Execute, and Report 

Trigger: One of the major parts of testing is to trigger the right tests at whatever point a module of an application change is made in the CI/CD pipeline, any other way, it might cause losing time in testing needless part. While planning the triggering stage, you should remember three things 

• Prepare the tests at the initial stage.  
• Consider a wide range of testing, including integration tests. 
• Perform tests for code audit and deployment. 

Execute: It involves on equal testing for the product along with their quality to ensure that developers have everything they need to induce results as per the expectation. This should go on with the DevOps testing and the environment to keep away from any snags in the QAOps cycle. Crucial factors that determine the planning of the execution in the development life cycle are as follows, 

• Ensure to do parallel testing while kick starting the step 
• To do integration tests need to find the right support 
• Need to check the scalability of the process and to ensure that the tests are executed in the right sequence as per the expectation. 
• Before executing the entire process, make sure that all the framework and infrastructure are available 

Report: When the tests are triggered and executed successfully, then the reporting process starts where the tests results can be showcased. The individual stakeholder can compare the result with previously run test which is stored in the reporting module. Some key areas to focus for a greater understanding of the reporting module: 

• Provide the snapshot and complete view of the entire project and need to focus on the source of the various steps associated in the process. 
• Quicker accessibility of explicit results without delay and should guarantee availability of the report at whatever point required. 
• Access all the details of the report which can be used for future reference on debugging purpose. 

Best Practices of QAOps in Continuous testing 

Here are some of the best practices to embrace Continuous Testing as a part of the DevOps process. To reduce risk and ensure quick delivery of the product at right time, the continuous testing should be integrated with the software development lifecycle. 

• CI/CD ought to be done consistently, ideally at regular schedule. Everybody’s work should be converted into the delivery pipeline. This aides in recognizing the defects at the beginning phases and correcting them before it’s too late. 
• Test engineer should utilize automation testing tools and scripts to cover as much of the possible testcase that needs to be automate and make sure to do regression testing on the existing functionality. 

Difference between DevOps and QAOps 

Benefits 

• Increased collaboration prompts bug fixing at earlier stages rather than later 
• Further develops the software delivery process, making it quicker and steadier without compromising the quality of the product. 
• Continuous interaction with other team helps the QA team in understanding the requirements more obviously and playing out the testing activities in a superior manner. 

• It reduces the feedback cycle time, and you can get instant feedback, which is vital to support productivity and more quality, stability, and reliability  

Conclusion: 

Although very innovative, QAOps is an emerging pattern that allows for process automation between software development, IT, and QA. There is still a difference of opinion on whether the ‘QAOps’ term exists for what it’s worth yet to be well known. However, given the benefits of the QAOps approach and the sort of lift it gives the items as far as accomplishing the quality, it will be a broadly utilized methodology in the coming future.