DevOps and Test Automation

Since a key aspect of DevOps is to ensure thatdeployments are made continuously, as

well as effectively, the need to for having tests in place is pretty obvious – untested and

faulty code has the potential to mitigate the benefits of DevOps.

Manual testing uses up resources, which can be seen as a waste by developers,

especially when they have other important projects to work on. This is exactly why

automating tests is important.

Some of the biggest plusses of using automated tests include:

Less Time Spent Worrying About Time-Consuming Issues

When things such as misconfigurations are automatically being searched for, the time of

developers and sysadmins can be spent on other things. If the automated tests also

offer quick fixes for these incorrect configs, they lead to even more efficient use of time

for devs and ops.

If only manual tests are used, the potential is there for IT workers to be lax about

checking everything, as they know how long it will take to do so.

Quickly Verifying that Changes Will Run Properly

Being able to automatically test that changes work properly before they’re introduced

gives developers more confidence once it’s time to deploy, and it gives sysadmins more

peace of mind that there’s a lower probability that they’ll find something seriously wrong

with a deployment. Manually testing as a developer programs is a huge hassle that

heavily increases the time it takes for delivery.

Cuts Costs

Again, this is related to the time saved. Time saved from needing to fix issues that could

be easily found through automated testing is time spent doing something beneficial to

the company. This article has a nice case study demonstrating some of the saving

potential that automated testing can create.

Reduces Human Error

Like the cliché, “we’re all human”. Even the best programmers and sysadmins will mess

up (obviously, some more than others). This isn’t to say that creating automated testing

is guaranteed to be 100% accurate, but if done well, they can be pretty close to it.

Potential Drawbacks?

The main complaints against automated testing seem to stem from a perceived lack of

necessity for automation and from the fact that time/resources must be taken to set up

automation in the first place.

“Automation for the sake of automation” is something I’ve heard a lot. This is to say that

just because something can be automated, doesn’t mean it needs to be automated (in a

way, like the notion “if it aint broke, don’t fix it!” – counter argument: Knight Capital). 

Maybe a company doesn’t really need to deploy often enough to have a true need to

automatically test everything. However, if a company is employing DevOps, it stands to

reason that they plan to deploy enough that the long-term benefits of automated testing

outweigh the short-term costs.

Short-term vs long-term cost is also the rationale as to why it can be wise to take the

time to set up automation now to save time in the future. By investing a bit of time and

effort now, an IT department can avoid spending a lot more time and effort fixing things

in the future.