A Practical Guide to Testing in DevOps

by Katrina Clokie

As organisations shift to a culture of intense collaboration and rapid delivery, the expectations on testers are changing. What does testing look like in an environment with automated build and deployment pipelines? How does appetite for risk change once a product can be tested in production? Who should testers look to connect with across the organisation and how can they work together effectively to delivery quality software?

This book offers direction and advice relevant to anyone involved in testing in a DevOps environment.

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction

167 pages, ebook

Published August 1, 2017

Reviews

[Bob Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear information about software development teams and testers do after agile testing is hard to find. This book has practical advice that dev teams with and without dedicated testers can use to advance continuous improvement and to increase development speed.

[Edd Beale · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not usually a fan of reading books for work, but this one I took a chance on and read through before recommending to my team. Nicely readable with a bunch of real examples and links out to more detail on every topic. Has a few slightly rough edges in the editing, but nothing that’s a real concern. Would recommend to anyone as an intro to testing in a DevOps environment, and as a decent intro to DevOps in general.

[Rasa Paškevičiūtė · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Testing in DevOps mindset, QA role in it, testing strategy, concrete examples from real companies. A lot of references to other useful blogs, books, articles. Every situation and approuch is different and every team has to find their way, but this book gives guidance.
Liked Kim Knup tester experience, how she "felt that she embraced "more of a couching mindset" and became an advocate of quality."
Nice DevOps bug filter model for automation on a DevOps environment.

[Federico Toledo · Rating 5 out of 5]

El libro está genial. No tiene desperdicio. Si bien me dedico al testing hace años, aprendí muchísimo leyendo este libro, mucho más de lo que me esperaba. En muchas ocasiones el libro tiene un valor especial por estar contadas desde otra perspectiva, lo cual ayuda a ampliar la visión. Lo subrayé casi todo.
Cada nueva página es una sorpresa, ya que de a ratos salta con algún consejo, alguna dinámica grupal, acciones concretas a realizar, así como referencias a otros autores y así mostrando el estado del arte sobre cada tema.
Ya he puesto en práctica alguna de las dinámicas que sugiere, y tengo una lista de otras que quiero probar, ya que realmente suman para la idea principal detrás del concepto de DevOps, y del empuje del libro: generar conversaciones adecuadas en los momentos oportunos.
Muy recomendable! Gracias Katrina!

[Mohamed Abdelwahab · Rating 5 out of 5]

DevOps presents a lot of opportunities to think differently about testing. Creating connections
between the development and operations teams can influence test coverage, test strategy, and even
the infrastructure where testing occurs. The degree of change in your organisation will depend on
the business drivers for DevOps and the appetite for risk.

The ideas presented in this book are a starting point for your own conversations and further research.
There is no best practice here, only guidance. With an understanding of the possibilities you can
determine what will work for you.

DevOps is not a change to fear. Testing remains an integral part of the development process. But
testers need to get involved. I hope that you will take inspiration from the experiences shared in this
book.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some real food for thought here. Fascinated (and slightly terrified) by the idea of pushing more testing into Production, but that's probably in no small part from working at a healthcare systems provider for almost a decade where appetite for risk in Prod was understandably small. There's definitely more scope for this at my new role and I'll definitely be sharing some of the industry examples and other juicy tidbits with the wider DevOps audience where I am working now.

[Viktor Slavchev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is one of the most significant, practically oriented books, I've read in last couple of years.
I find particularly useful the part about testing in production, the examples from the tech giants and the metaphore with the pendulum.
A must read to anyone involved in testing that wants to stay relevant. Well done, Katrina! :)

[Gabriel Harder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is really a gem! It found it very valuable as I diged deep into the topic of automated software testing and how to use it, to improve your software delivery efficiency. Of course, you cannot go around DevOps for this. I highly recommend this little book to get an overview into testing specialities in a DevOps environment. The idea of Monitoring as Testing is just one example.

[Faiza Yousuf · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a really well written book that will introduce to DevOps and its relevant practices along with the pros and cons. Even if you are new to DevOps or you are looking for ways to improve your current DevOps practices, this book can be used as a principle guide and will help you understand concepts with relevant context and examples.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! I consider it required reading for those looking to craft effective software quality strategies in a modern DevOps context. The book is chock full of references and I expect to use this book in my day-to-day work for years to come.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book s so fresh, well-structured, clear and inspiring! One of the best testing books I've ever read. Hopefully I'll write a blog article about it, because I wont as much testers as possible to read it

[Doron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction for testers and non-testers to DevOps culture. As an introduction, it covers all testing points in the DevOps pipeline from dev to production. It gives a wide angle, but it doesn't give you enough information on how to start to test.

[Ruslan Voronkov · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of trendy words and definitely not deep enough to be very practical - some of the topics are half page long.
Still a nice introduction with some good quotes and interesting stories from known names in tech world.

[Mariam Melkonyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a rather interesting book about how testing should evolve when devops comes to organization. The most I liked the examples of different companies, what kind of changes they have done ans which results they have achieved.

[Pat Loughery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent approach to a developing field. Very well structured with suggestions and stories. I’ll be summarizing this book to my QA team and likely ask them to read it also.

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book on the changing role of testers in a DevOps world with example cases and lots of links to additional material to read.

[Oleksandr Romanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool book about the modern approach to testing in the world of DevOps. Here you find a lot of information on how to go beyond typical testing responsibilities and borders.