Introduction to QAOps and its importance for Web Applications

QAOps refers to preserving software quality via a DevOps philosophy.

You’ve probably heard the term “DevOps.” DevOps is short for Software Development (Dev) and IT Operations (Ops), which points towards the interaction between development and various IT operations.

The introduction of DevOps for the operations of an enterprise is intended to promote communication internally.

Quality Assurance is imperative to the high-quality delivery of software products.

Many businesses are bringing software development and business operations together, so why isn’t it possible to collaborate between software QA and product for enhanced business efficiency?

This adds a new flavor to DevOps called the QAOps framework.

In simple terms, QAOps strives to improve the development process by making the testing process more robust, versatile, and stable while maintaining the quality of your website or online application. A QAOps framework, in technical terms, combines QA procedures into software operations to enhance the operational software model.

The QAOps combines the basic notion of testing with DevOps, such as CI/CD, and brings siloed teams to collaborate on the pipeline to the QA process.

QAOps Definition

While there is no formal definition of QAOps, the approach may be defined using these two ideas.

The primary goal behind developing the QAOps framework is to club the DevOps continuous model with CI/CD pipeline rather than performing the testing at undefined levels.

Another advantage of QAOps is that it facilitates communication between QA engineers and developers. As a result, QA engineers must collaborate closely with software developers, operational staff, and everyone engaged in the CI/CD process.

Fundamentals of QAOps Frameworks

QAOps resolves the most typical conflicts between testing and quality assurance teams.

Want to resolve the most brutal conflicts between the testing and QA teams? QAOps would that do for you!

The QAOps methodology eliminates problems when testers “expect” the QA team to address the issue and vice versa. QAOps fosters collaboration across the organization’s many divisions.

To put the notion of QAOps into action, QAOps employs the following high-level testing procedures:

1. Automated Testing

The advantage of automated testing is that it runs with little or no human intervention using technology and tools. Before diving into the development process of the automated framework, the QA engineers need to research the product and comprehend the specifications.

Depending on the product and the stage of development, QA engineers can determine which tests can be successfully automated to save time.

Your regression test cases will be the most apparent sorts of testing to automate. This testing takes the most time, which can be utilized somewhere productive by deploying automated testing.

Similarly, commonly utilized product functions should be automated.

Why?

You don’t want your most-used functions to fail and produce a negative user experience as your product develops complexity and features!

Consider a user story to better comprehend this.

John is a web tester responsible for ensuring the web application’s compatibility. He is very well aware that manual testing can be time-consuming. Testing a number of web applications or webpages over hundreds of browsers and operating systems can be a headache.

John realizes this and understand that if he spends a number of hours overperforming the manual browser testing, then he would not be able to find unique test cases. This is where automated testing steps and in, and John realizes that this can be time-saving.

Performing automation testing from ground zero would help you gravitate through a phase of proper planning and documentation process.

2. Parallel Testing

As a part of the QAOps methodology, the testing should be performed quickly and in parallel to the delivery pipeline. By slowing the testing process, the delivery process would be straight-away impacted. Running automated tests will speed up the procedure only if done sequentially. To address the issue, the test engineers would run several tests simultaneously.

Let’s continue with John’s story, which we discussed in the context of automated cross-browser testing.

John created several automation test scripts covering various web app sets. However, another issue arose that he was unprepared for!

John was deploying Selenium WebDriver to automate compatibility tests for browser scenarios. This is because Selenium WebDriver would only run the test once, keeping others in the queue. As a result, John noticed that the test cycles would continue to be delayed due to the serial execution of test scripts.

John now deploys Selenium Grid to benefit from the parallel testing process with Selenium. He can run several tests at once by leveraging the capabilities of the Selenium Grid. This significantly reduced his overall test execution time, allowing him to complete his test requirements on time.

It would help if you had more hardware, infrastructure, and CPUs for parallel testing to run simultaneously. The advantage is that you get quicker results without disrupting the delivery pipeline. Businesses can now use cloud-based cross-browser testing tools like LambdaTest, which provides a scalable infrastructure to perform testing.

3. Test Scalability

Once your web app lands on the market, you look for feedback and work on suggestions while incorporating new features for future testing.

After the release cycle, your application can scale per the testing requirements. The ripple effect of the new code changes needs to be validated for each code migration from the existing CI/CD pipeline.

Scalability testing should therefore be included in your infrastructure investment checklist.

The process of scalability testing aids in determining the application performance for different conditions for test loads. The test results demonstrate the application’s response to differential loads. The testing procedure should be scalable in conjunction with the CI/CD pipeline.

The CI/CD pipeline grows as per the project requirements. During these times, testing should be coordinated with the CI/CD pipeline. Scalability testing assists QA engineers in identifying performance issues with web applications.

The standard QAOps practices want the QA teams to possess a scalable infrastructure to perform the testing and increase the testing speed when required.

Let us ponder what John did to address the scalability issues.

As the web application that John was working on became more feature-rich, he expanded his cross-border testing checklist as a few features were configured with CSS Subgrid.

As a workaround, developers implemented fallbacks for these issues, and John’s responsibility was to ensure that these newly implemented workarounds were compatible with the existing application.

John had to look for ways to scale his Selenium Grid test to work on more modern and older browsers, and Windows and macOS systems. If he continues to add these devices to his internal Selenium Grid infrastructure, he could end up leaving his manager with a sizable bill.

He cannot use cloud-based device labs or infrastructure providers like RackSpace or an AWS device farm because he works for a small business.

So, what solution he adopted?

He looked for Lambda tests which provided him with an excellent Selenium Grid that scaled per the project requirements. This also helped him eliminate the hassle of maintaining an in-house architecture at the moment!

Integrating DevOps with QA

Making QA activities an indispensable testing component is the last step to achieving a QAOps framework.

Creating test cases with the help of developers and assisting the QA teams in detecting potential issues is one of the easiest methods to connect IT operations with QA. This provides developers and QA engineers the ideal chance to work together and understand the entire QA process.

Additionally, it does not imply that QA engineers may let these procedures slide and do nothing. Collaboration amongst many stakeholders only improves the effectiveness of the development and testing process.

Rewind to John, our test automation expert, who chose to give QAOps a try and shared his experience with his management and other stakeholders.

He understood that a go-to-market launch happens more quickly the earlier test cases are developed.

To deploy the QAOps paradigm in his company, he offered shift-left testing.

Since a noticeable decrease in anomalies was discovered following CI/CD pipeline conversion.

Lifecycle of QAOps Framework

QAOps involves putting up the appropriate platform and tools on the CI/CD pipeline to ensure that the freshly built code is tested and verified.

There are three main steps in setting up the testing platform (as shown in the above diagram).

Since the primary step in an automation testing life cycle is to ensure a reliable release of the program, the processes under QA are well known to us all.

Trigger, Execute, and Report is the three distinct steps that make up the QAOps process.

1. Trigger

This is one of the most critical components of QA testing to look for an application feature change performed in the CI/CD pipeline. The only changes that should alter the running tests are the changes rendered to the app’s functionality. If not this, more valuable time would be wasted in testing the undesirable features of the application or looking for crucial regions that are often overlooked.

In simpler terms, it would take longer than required to perform and provide the tests than there are exactly.

So, the triggering step needs to be well thought out and matched with the automation testing life cycle.

2. Execute

The second stage in the QAOps process is the execution stage. There are several tests on the testing functionality that run at the same time to save time and enjoy better results.

As mentioned previously, the tests should run concurrently and be imperative to save time and get better results quickly. You should also ensure that the infrastructure scales and disperse the loads required to perform the parallel testing process.

To prevent any testing snags during the QAOps life cycle, ensure continuous testing in the DevOps environment is highly available.

3. Reporting

The process of reporting initiates after the tests begin running. These results are displayed in the reporting module. The exemplary method of reporting module should be designed well for the QAOps process that should be effective. The ideal reporting design should offer better information and a brief overview.

The developer looking at the reports would find the reporting process. beneficial. This also helps the information to be quickly accessible and available when and where required.

How can QAOps be applied within a company?

Although the name QAOps may appear similar to DevOps, there is no need for a radical shift in workplace culture.

This framework helps developers and testers cooperate and work together to produce results more quickly and thoroughly test new application components before release.

However, for this to occur, it is crucial to convey to relevant decision-makers and stakeholders the significance of QAOps (especially the technical team).

They must comprehend the advantages of putting a QAOps framework in place. This makes it easier for everyone else in the company—developers, testing engineers, IT operations managers, etc.—to comprehend the needs and act appropriately.

Conclusion

In conclusion, QAOps, or continuous testing in DevOps as it is known, opens the door for quicker software delivery when properly planned and executed.

This gives the development teams the assurance they need for a quicker time to market without sacrificing quality.

Reiterating the issue above, implementing QAOps involves considerable persuasion of the business’s stakeholders.

Once you get passed this point, moving forward should be very easy.