Testing in a DevOps Era: Perceptions of Testers in Norwegian Organisations

Abstract

To better understand the challenges encountered by testers in DevOps development, we have performed an empirical investigation of what are the trends and challenges for the testers in the DevOps environment. We have discussed the quality assurance in the difference focus areas of DevOps: Social Aspects, automation, leanness, sharing, measurement. The results were then themed in five different topics of concern to testers: collaboration, roles and responsibilities, types of tests, automation and monitoring and infrastructure. In Testing, there has been a change on the roles and responsibilities of testers, where there is much more focus on the responsibilities for testing across the teams, instead of a sole responsibility of the tester. Testers are also forced to collaborate more with other stakeholders as operations and business. Testing is brought to another level of automation in DevOps but there is still need for manual tests, that have to be much more risk-based than before. And finally, testing transparency is a must in this process and should involve not only development team but also operations and customers. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge on what are the areas we need to focus for improvement in testing for the DevOps environment. This paper also contributes to practitioners to improve their testing focusing on specific areas that needs attention.