Shift-left Testing: Benefits, Approaches, Adoption Best Practices
In a traditional software development lifecycle, the QA team tests software when it is fully implemented and ready for release. So fixing bugs in the finished product may require a lot of money and time. Shift-left testing is a QA approach that mitigates this risk by starting QA activities early in the development lifecycle.
In this post, we briefly overview this testing approach, examine its benefits, and share best practices for using it in software development.
How is shift-left testing different from standard testing?
The traditional SDLC establishes a linear progression of activities, where each stage is separate. The QA team can start testing only after developers finish coding the solution, and they have to finish all quality assurance (QA) activities before deployment.
Shift-left testing is part of the continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) approach to software development that suggests involving the QA team in the early stages of the development process. The key shift-left testing principle is literally shifting testing left in the software development cycle — closer to the design or even requirements gathering stages.
The shift-left approach allows QA specialists to start working on the product’s quality when the product exists only as an idea. They can test the product’s concept, analyze requirements, work on testing documentation, etc. Then, the QA team creates a testing strategy for the project and estimates QA-related tasks.
Why should you use shift-left testing?
Shift-left testing emerged as a response to the limitations and disadvantages of the traditional SDLC:
- High cost of fixing an issue
- Long time to market
- Unforeseen post-release errors.
Starting QA activities early in the development cycle allows your team to build the product with quality in mind. They can discover critical issues as early as possible, or even avoid them completely.
At Apriorit, we adopt shift-left testing approach in our projects that use continuous integration and continuous delivery methodologies. Combined with shift-left testing, CI/CD allows our team to increase test coverage and reduce the number of human errors while delivering a quality product with each release.
Key benefits of shift-left testing
We have experienced the following benefits of the shift-left approach to testing:
Which shift-left activities can you adopt?
At Apriorit, we engage QA specialists at the very beginning of the CI/CD workflow and to carry out the following activities:
Read more about each activity in the full article in our QA blog.
Best practices for shift-left testing
Adopting the shift-left approach to software testing is challenging for any team that’s used to working with a traditional linear SDLC. If you decide to use this approach, you’ll need to change not only your usual workflow but your team’s mindset as well. Consider following these best practices to ease the process:
Learn more about the best shift-left practices from the full article in our QA blog.
Final thoughts
With shift-left testing, you can reduce the time and cost of QA activities as well as improve overall product quality. But to adopt and benefit from this approach, you need to know how to implement it and which tests shouldn’t be shifted left.
At Apriorit, our QA experts carefully choose tools and activities for shift-left testing that will suit a particular project. When developing a shift-left strategy for software testing, we focus on setting high quality standards and ensuring flawless software performance.
Read the full article on our blog where we also share our experience adopting shift-left testing and key technologies we use to do so.
