What are the best practices for integrating QA into DevOps workflows?

There is no such thing as automated testing. People who speak of automated testing are probably talking about output checking. By using the term “testing” for a simplistic algorithmic process, they are obscuring the entire human enterprise of critical thinking that characterizes real testing. They are dehumanizing testing. They are throwing obstacles in the path of responsible people who take testing seriously. It’s as if we spoke of leadership by saying we should automate as much of leadership as possible, or since love is scarce in our world, let’s automate love. It’s absurd and insulting. Saying it helps no one. Attempting to do it wastes time and money. And Elon’s single-minded pursuit of rampant automation broke Twitter.

Another key area of automation is within the continuous integration and continuous delivery or deployment workflow. Supporting tools include GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and GitOps.

I think there is a gap in here. There is no a logic which about tools support automation. You can automate anything. And the tools shared here like Docker is containerization tool Jenkins is CI/CD tool and others are testing tools for different purposes. So automation of a process depends on needs and resources.

I would say the best way to integrate tooling is by a collaborative effort between a devops team and a qa team. Having the QA team provide documentation regarding how they have set up their tooling will help the devops team to be able to properly integrate the tools into their workflows.

This understanding auf the test process is far too shallow, as it reduces it to test execution. I for one still havn't seen tools that reliably automate test design, e.g.

In my experience you'll be best served to start out with a small amount of stable testing in your pipeline and then build on it. If you try to put all tests in, regardless if they are stable or not, you'll ended up with failing tests and loss of faith in your output. Put your stable tests in at first to get to hang of it running and your developers gaining quick feedback. As your other tests become stable, you can add those tests in your pipeline.

The shift-left approach in integrating QA into DevOps workflows is crucial for improving software quality. Throughout my experience, I have seen that although this approach requires an initial investment of time and resources, it often results in significant long-term savings. However, it can be controversial as it challenges traditional structures and established roles within development teams, which can cause resistance to change. Essentially, it promotes a culture of shared responsibility for quality from the start of the development cycle, which can be a radical change for teams used to a more sequential approach.