Quality is at the heart of all software development projects because it enables you to make a mark in the market and impress your customers. When customers appreciate your product, that’s where the hard work pays off. It is essential for your business’s growth to keep a quality control check that ultimately impacts your reputation in the market.

The DevOps approach has made software development processes simpler and more effective. It shows the competency of the final outcome in the industry. Initially, development and operations teams worked individually but now QA and Ops have collaborated which led to the formation of QAOps.

So, what is QAOPs and how has it proven to be valuable in software development?

What is QAOps?

QAOps deals with enhancing the quality of the software with the help of the DevOps approach. As DevOps focuses on the relationship between development and IT operation, QAOps refers to the amalgamation of development and IT operations.

The objective of QAOps is to strengthen the association between the two business units. It allows the developers and IT engineers to develop and deliver high-quality software products. The process becomes faster and more stable without having to compromise on the website or the web application.

When the QAOps framework incorporates the QA processes into software operations, it gives a streamlined and perfect software operational model. It brings the essential components of the continuous testing of DevOps like CI/CD and consolidates to apply them to pipeline QA processes.

One of the ideas behind introducing the QAOps framework is to erase the probability of errors in the application of software development. It helps produce seamless collaboration between the two teams and everyone who is the part of CI/CD pipeline as they work closely to produce effective results.

Fundamentals of QAOps Frameworks

Some QAOps practices are introduced to eliminate the conflicts between the testing team and the quality assurance team. The names of some fundamental and high-quality practices are

Automated Testing
Parallel Testing
Test Scalability
Integrated Dev and IT Ops in QA

Automated Testing

Automated testing forms the strongest base for the QAOps framework.

Automated testing refers to using the help of technology and tools for performing tests. It requires the least amount of physical effort of a person. To make it happen, QA engineers have to get into a deep study of automation frameworks. The specifications allow them to understand the processes better.

QA engineers help decide the tests that can be automated which saves time and tests functionalities effectively.

Parallel Testing

In the QAOps framework, testing is supposed to run in parallel to the delivery pipeline. It has to be quick because if the testing runs slowly, it will have an impact on every delivery process. Indeed, automated testing enhances the process but if the testing is run serially, it is a problem. And to solve this concern, the testing engineers have to run many tests together at the same time instead of running them one by one.

For parallel testing, large hardware is required with infrastructure and CPUs to simultaneously run the test. It takes a little investment with a few CPUs, but it shows great results without causing any hurdle to the delivery pipeline and no loss of revenue.

Scalability Testing

Once the product starts to gain the appreciation and gives you the desired revenue, that’s when you have to scale it for the growth of the company. To scale any product, software, or app it is required to add innovative features and enhance the pre-existing ones. As the products scale, the testing has to necessarily scale as well.

Scalability testing tests the behavior of an application when you scale it up or down. Scalability testing allows you to understand the performance of the application and at any given time and condition that can invariably change by changing the testing loads. With the outcome of testing, you can determine the response of the application with respect to the differential loads.

To streamline the process by following the QAOps practice, the QA teams need to have scalable infrastructures that are designed to perform and improve the speed of testing.

Integrated Dev and IT Ops in QA

This practice involves the integration of the QA process in the CI/CD pipeline. It is considered a final practice for the QAOps framework.

The easy way to do this is by integrating development and IT operations and by making developers write test cases to make IT engineers detect the problems that are likely to be found in them. So, when the QA engineers and developers collaborate, they get the complete the conceptualization which helps in the QA process.

The QA engineers are as important as the developers in this process because together they can create the whole picture. The collaboration helps in making the development and testing process easy and efficient.

In a Nutshell

Every software company wants to develop the best web and mobile application and quality testing is the only way to ensure that. QAOps approach creates a smooth and effective process that helps the development cycle grow. All you have to do is make use of the basic practices and add additional and necessary features.