But if I'm honest, this model doesn't tell me much about how to test at every stage or who's accountable for that testing. And if we're supposed to test at every stage, why is testing its own stage? That's awkward. The SDLC is insufficient. It is not going to take us to where we're going. And I think this is especially important with testing.
Testing is represented as a single spoke in the Revolution model. But look at how it's laid out. It emphasizes accountability because it crosses every single role we take on throughout the development process. Everyone from architects to operators is responsible for testing.
But it goes further than that. There is no beginning and end in software anymore. I mean, I guess you could go out of business. That would be sad, don't do that. But beyond that, you're responsible for your ever-aging software. You have to create security tests to ensure that your software doesn't fall out of compliance. I can't think of much more important than protecting your customer data. Continuous testing enables engineers to avoid unexpected behavior failures when deploying between environments or releasing software to customers.
A foundation of observability is monitoring and what is monitoring, if not continuous testing, or at least a form of it. Flexible systems are flexible because they absorb change well. They can be molded and shifted as needed. Its tests protect functionality from unexpected changes that would make the system brittle. And finally, scaling would be impossible without the consistent reassurance of continuous testing. It's important to test for scale at the application level as well as the infrastructure level.
Testing in software development isn't a straight line, nor is it a perfect loop. There is no start, there is no finish. Continuous testing in the Revolution model asks that we all accept accountability for our many roles and all the aspects of a testable system we consider along the way. I believe this model, well not perfect, gets us closer to engineering teams that default to utilizing continuous testing across all of their work.
We need a modern model for this modern era, and I believe this is just the testing revolution that will get us started. Thank you.
Comments are closed.