Shift Left Testing

Shift Left Testing is a technique used to detect and avoid bugs early in the software development process. The goal is to improve quality as early as possible by shifting tasks to the left. In the traditional software creation model, requirements are kept on the left side of the plan, whereas delivery and testing demands are kept on the right. In the event that the testing team discovers any errors or bugs, it could affect the project's timeline or cost. As a result, the testing team is constantly under pressure to complete functional and additional system testing within constrained time frames.?

Shift Left Testing can be viewed differently by different people. It is ideally a method used on software development models (like an agile, waterfall, V- Shaped model, etc.) Many strategies and practices are used in the software industry to avoid schedule slippage and find bugs prior to release. Shift Left Testing is a well-known practice that many businesses follow today.

The eventual aim of Shift left testing is to determine and fix bugs as early as possible in the development process, thereby preventing defects later on. This technique allows the testing team to participate in the requirements, design, and coding phase. The team also provides feedback to key parties so that it could be discussed early to prevent major issues during the testing phase.

Shift Left activities are outlined below;

-?Testing Team will work with business and relevant stakeholders during the requirement phase to understand the demand, plan the resources, finalize the requirements, and devise a test strategy for those demands.

-?Demand planning is a key aspect of the shift left strategy, serving as the starting point for all other activities throughout the test's life cycle.

-?Validation of requirements & design enquires technical expertise, and a subject-matter expert in all of these areas from the testing front can be extremely helpful to identify defects from the beginning to the end.

-?Static testing is used in the initial phases of a project to validate the design and requirements. The ultimate focus of static testing is to find defects early in the project's life cycle that may be extremely expensive to remove later on. Use appropriate checklists and tools to verify and validate design requirements. Defects should be recorded in a defect management system.

-?Analyze dependencies on test environments, test stubs, and test data and get this addressed before the test phase starts.

-?During the Requirement/ Design phase, risk-based analysis is required to identify the effects and possibility of failure for test scenarios. Once the test cases are complete, the next step is to discuss the consequences of failure with members of the development and business teams and then prioritize the test scenarios depending on the outcomes of the analysis. This vastly simplifies the creation of test coverage for both short and long-duration executions.?

To Wrap It Up

The benefits of Shift Left testing are obvious. By identifying and eliminating bugs as part of the software development lifecycle, we can improve code quality. Aside from that, incorporating testing early in the product development process will save your development team time and money. Let us know in the comments section below if you use or plan to use this testing method for your business.

Author- Vinodh Kumar (Business Analyst - Mindpool Technologies Inc)