Automation Testing Best Practices for Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery (CD) is an integral part of a Continuous Integration (CI) / Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline. The deployment of software in QA, pre-production and production environments is automated by the CD platform. To further scale up the efficiency of the continuous delivery process, there are certain best practices that can be implemented as and when required strategically. In this article, you will get to know the best practices for continuous delivery.
What is Continuous Delivery (CD)?
It is a specific process wherein code changes are automatically deployed to a production and/or testing stage after the build stage. This means an automated release process is on top of automated testing and the application can be deployed anytime by clicking on a button.
The continuous delivery platform is used for releasing daily, weekly or fortnightly, based solely upon the business requirements. If the team wants to optimize the CD platform, then the team should ensure that the production should be deployed as early as possible. This, in turn, ensures that small batches are released that is easy to troubleshoot.
Following are the continuous delivery best practices:
1. The same automated release mechanism should be employed: When different release mechanisms are used for each environment, then it may in turn lead to issues and complications that require fixing to be carried out. Instead, when the same automated release mechanism is used, there will be a smooth running of tests and upon that the likelihood of a time-consuming problem will be reduced.
2. The significance of automation: Strategic use of automation will ensure that continuous delivery process will be used effectively. The pipeline needs to be scrutinized and the entire process needs to be examined and every step needs to be included to ensure CI/CD automation. The bottleneck needs to be looked upon that is holding up the process.
3. The tactical relevance of communication: Most of the aspects related to CD are technical, but, non-technical aspects such as ‘communication’ also play an important role. Huge benefits can be delivered when team members communicate effectively. If all the team members who are in line with the software development process are on the same page then many benefits can be reaped.
4. The success needs to be measured accordingly: The metrics need to be tracked by the development teams along the pipeline to ascertain what is working and what is not working. Then after, the team needs to ascertain as to how the process can be further improved. The change fail rate, MTTR and the frequency of deployments are some of the metrics that need to be checked.
5. Continuous Integration (CI) needs to be implemented: Specific steps for CI need to be implemented to achieve successful continuous delivery. In fact, CD is considered to be an extension of CI. To ensure a smooth CD process, the team must ensure that a high-quality CI process needs to be preceded first. The software development process can be streamlined by utilizing both CI and CD processes together.
6. The binaries need to be built only once: The binaries need to be built once to know for certain that the deployable binaries are the same as the binaries that were tested. If the binaries are being recreated then there is a possibility that there will be a difference between the released ones and the tested ones. When the development of binaries is done during the commit stage then it needs to be stored in a repository.
Conclusion: The above mentioned CD best practices play a key role in the software development process. However, depending upon the project scenario, specific CD best practices can be selected for implementation purposes. If you are looking forward to performing automation testing for your specific project, then do visit online a premium software testing services company that will provide you the required consultation and support to perform the testing process rewardingly.
