QA in the DevOps Age: Testing Software Updates with Production Traffic

With the advent of the DevOps model, testing and development cycles are faster than ever before. In an environment of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), developers make changes to the code that trigger a pipeline of automated tests. But the problem is that these automated tests are only looking for specific issues; they can’t detect everything that could possibly go wrong. And that means that bugs and problems in the code can be pushed live without the required testing, resulting in network downtime, lost revenue, and frustrated end-users. Conducting side-by-side testing, in which live user traffic is run against a current software version and the proposed upgrade, offers a new approach. It enables developer teams to quickly uncover differences, bugs, and other defects in quality before they’re pushed live, avoiding costly rollbacks. Robert Ross will discuss how this approach addresses the challenges of QA testing and provide actionable insights on how to actually put it into practice. You'll gain a deeper understanding of the shortcomings of current software testing methods, as well as insight into how you can evolve your team’s testing practices to meet CI/CD goals, without sacrificing software quality.