Fused testing pushes teams closer to continuous integration Kassidy Kelley , Managing Editor September 23rd, 2022 You’ve heard from us about fused testing before, and get ready to hear more. Fused testing is a methodology that goes beyond just executing manual and automated testing frameworks. (Though it does do that exceptionally well.) Fused testing is also a big push toward continuous integration (CI). Yes, that CI/CD pipeline. By seamlessly integrating human and machine testing resources into unified workflows, fused testing enables continuous testing, a major accelerator of CI/CD. Continuous integration helps teams keep up with ambitious software releases and update schedules, and ensures high levels of usability. Our recent eBook dives heavily into creating a pragmatic test automation journey that wields the fused testing methodology to improve continuous integration and continuous testing. With a client example. And pictures! Whether you’ve seamlessly integrated automated testing into your QA strategy or are wondering where to start with automation, our checklist will help evaluate your readiness. Why do we want to develop CI? Continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), and the broader DevOps movement has radically accelerated the pace of software development. Teams are now looking to deploy code quickly, sometimes in hours and days rather than weeks. Automation is a crucial driver of continuous integration; without automated CI, devs must manually integrate code into the end product. This is a bureaucratic nightmare when coordinating with product teams and other siloes. Trust us… you need to push toward CI. We mentioned above that automation is a massive driver in the journey to CI. Automated tools can organize, manage, build and commit code for unique features. Automated tools can also execute and merge unit tests into a central repository for humans to handle. Automated tools, working alongside devs, create better, bug-free builds that push teams closer to CI and a solid CD pipeline. As part of your CI pipeline, you need a game plan for assessing how to critically integrate tools and embrace new partnerships to keep up with rolling demand, need, and automation capabilities. Keep in mind, however, that integrations require an open architecture. Fused testing will provide that for you. The critical importance of open architecture When fusing manual and automated testing strategies, a barrier to success is the cost (time, effort, experience, and cash) of switching from platform to platform. If you integrate more than a few additional tools, you can suddenly find yourself juggling multiple repositories, test cases, email tabs, and hundreds of pages of output. It’s impossible to assume that your current tech stack will cover your needs forever when it’s highly likely that you will have to add and change your integrations as your QA needs develop. An open architecture takes an agnostic approach to DevOps integrations, allowing for extensible tooling. It lowers switching costs and provides flexible tooling options for task management, test management, and test automation through partnerships and integrations. If you’re using Testlio for fused testing, (of course you are!), we have a selection of partners that seamlessly integrate into our platform to maximize scope, coverage, and capabilities. Check out what six of our automated partner integrations can do for you. While they all provide the traditional benefits of software testing (releasing with confidence, coverage across devices, and O/S combinations), they also have unique features that squeeze out every last inch of ROI from your automated testing journey. How fused testing took LGND closer to CI One of the forerunner clients to implement fused testing is NFT marketplace LGND. Adam Kneisler, VP of Engineering for LGND, was brought in to build a fully functional platform so that a global audience could make seamless transactions on opening day. Like many companies, LGND’s current CI/CD pipeline felt incredibly staggered. A massive problem for a digital-first company anticipating mass traffic. LGND turned to fused testing for the methodology and the incredible resources partnering with Testlio provides. As soon as the ink was dry on the partnership, Kneisler had access to QA and QE leaders, a massive internal testing team, and resources to kickstart automation. Soon, LGND was improving an inefficient, staggered, non-scheduled deployment cycle. Manual testing gave early feedback on functionality, while repeated manual work shifted to nightly automated runs. By fusing manual and automated workflows, more reported bugs were pushed into JIRA and categorized by issue magnitude. Anytime a merge happened into a specific branch, LGND had the resources to push and deploy automatically. By shifting left and embracing fused testing, LGND discovered and destroyed bugs earlier in production, created automated suites with manual fallback, and released with more confidence. More efficient and comprehensive testing supported LGND on their journey to a true CI/CD pipeline to build, test, and release more frequently. If you missed it the first time, here is our free eBook on fused testing. It’s worth a read.