High-performing teams not only use DevOps, but they use DevOps with purpose. One of the biggest benefits of and motivations to employ DevOps is to streamline and speed up deployment processes. Teams that have dynamic, experienced DevOps report deployments that are 46 times faster (and more reliable) than the industry average. 

But these speedy, accurate deployments don’t just happen like magic after starting DevOps. Quality assurance, unit testing, UAT, and pre-production releases are all part of the crucial “test and release” stage to the overarching DevOps journey. 

Let’s review the different facets of testing and release, the best strategies for them, and how this impacts the final outcome of a DevOps project. 

Quality Assurance and Unit Testing

Quality assurance, or QA, is an important next step in the overall DevOps process. It may sound simple on the surface, but this actually involves multiple important steps. Early and frequent collaboration is key to making QA successful. From the very beginning, we are building our understanding of your business processes, integrations to other systems, and expected outcomes. This foundation is what informs our QA processes down the line and ensures everyone involved is working towards the same end results. 

As we develop, unit testing begins. Unit testing is conducted to ensure things are running smoothly and that there are no obvious issues. During this time, user stories (first drafted in the early planning stages) are expanded into test scripts. We use these test scripts to guide our testing of the full end-to-end processes encompassing the new functionality. We collaborate on the scripts with you to ensure…

Want to keep reading? Take a look at the complete ebook, “Understanding DevOps and How Managed Services Makes it Easier,” for more insights.