By Gerie Owen
To be successful in today’s businessenvironment, virtually all organizations must plan for digital transformation,not only to thrive but to survive. Often, when organizations embark on digitaltransformation initiatives, they turn to DevOps to increase business value andimprove customer experience.
Testers, as champions of the customer andguardians of their organizations’ digital reputations, are uniquely positionedto enable digital transformation. Weenable digital transformation by focusing testing on business risk and customervalue as well as transforming our test processes.
DevOps enablesDigital Transformation. The synergy is clear: digital transformation and the principlesof DevOps are closely aligned. Specifically,continuous integration and continuous delivery enable innovation in operations,streamline processes and eliminate bottlenecks.
Continuoustesting plays a key role in the continuous delivery pipeline by enabling bothhigh quality and high velocity and ensuring customer happiness. Let’s examinehow continuous delivery enables digital transformations by streamliningprocesses and focusing on value to the customers and how testers can enable andchampion this process.
DevOps Principles Aligned with Digital Transformation
Digital transformationcan be defined in many ways; however, it is a fundamental shift in the way anorganization approaches its business and operational processes by usingtechnology to increase focus on and improve customer experience. Most digital transformations are focused oncustomer experience, operational processes and business models. DevOps principles described in the ThreeWays — systems thinking, amplifying feedback loops and creating a culturalof experimentation and continual learning — can be the basis for creating the majorchanges that are required for digital transformation.
Systemsthinking or focusing on the performance of an entire process is the mosteffective approach to transforming business models and operationalprocesses. If changes are made tofundamental operations in siloed initiatives, they will likely fail. Amplifying feedback loops is critical todigital transformation so that corrections can be made early and often. And creating a culture of continuousexperimentation and learning encourages innovation without fear of consequencesif a new business, process or technological approach fails.
TestersEnabling Digital Transformation by Transforming Test Processes
Testers enable digital transformation not onlyby championing the customer, but also by transforming their testpractices. Transformational testpractices include implementing the practices of continuous testing, including“shift left”, test optimization, as well as the use of service virtualizationand advanced analytics, and “shift right”, i.e., testing in production.
Continuoustesting is an approach to managing risk by focusing not only on eliminatingtesting bottlenecks but more importantly, increasing the effectiveness of ourtest processes. The test pyramid is a“shift left” pattern whereby most of the automated test cases are concentratedin the unit, API, component and integration layers with fewer automated testcases used to test the GUI layer.
Testersas Champions of the Customer
As testers,meeting the challenges of our role in digital transformation requires acoordinated approach made up of several components. Customers expect a seamless experience acrossall channels; however, they do not necessarily expect to perform the same actionson every channel. Therefore, a digitaltransformation test strategy will require using customer behavior analytics tounderstand customer’s browsing, purchasing and other transactions acrosschannels in order to test efficiently and effectively.
As champions ofthe customers, we must focus on testing the customer experience. This means we must learn to use customeranalytics, personas and customer journeys and combine the results of those withexploratory testing.
Testers and DevOps can be the keys to successful digitaltransformation through by focusing on technological transformation based onbusiness value and customer happiness. Testers, this is your opportunity to goabove and beyond and contribute to your organizations in innovative,customer-centric ways.
Gerie Owen is a Testing Strategist and Evangelist. She is a Certified Scrum Master, Conference Presenter and Author on technology and testing topics. She enjoys mentoring new QA Leads and brings a cohesive team approach to testing. Gerie is the author of many articles on technology including Agile and DevOps topics. She recently developed a curriculum for DevOps 101 training. Gerie chooses her presentation topics based on her experiences in technology, what she has learned from them and what she would like to do to improve them. Gerie can be reached through her website, www.gerieowen.com , her blog, Testing in the Trenches, is at https://testinggirl.wordpress.com/ and @GerieOwen on Twitter and on LinkedIn .