CircleCI Adds Test Insights Module to CI/CD Platform

CircleCI today announced it has added a Test Insights capability to its continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform to make it easier to identify tests that are either taking too long to run or simply exhibiting some form of anomalous behavior.

Dawit Gebregziabher, product manager for data insights at CircleCI, said Test Insights is designed to make it simpler for IT organizations to shift more responsibility for testing further left toward DevOps teams that identify issues as applications are being built on the CircleCI platform.

Each organization will still need to determine what tools to employ to create a test, but once it starts running, the Test Insights module will be able to surface the tests that, for one reason or another, are problematic to execute, he added.

Test Insights, for example, will flag flaky tests and identify the longest-running and most failed tests. It will also enable DevOps teams to identify performance changes over time to pinpoint changes in application behavior.

Finally, DevOps teams can track benchmarks at the organization, workflow and job level, as well as metrics for mean-time-to-recovery, throughput and durations for 24-hour, 7-day and 30-day windows of time.

The challenge DevOps teams often encounter is a test may be run even when it’s apparent the application will fail. Test Insights makes it feasible for DevOps teams to manage the testing process much more efficiently, said Gebregziabher.

It’s not quite clear how far testing is shifting left. There’s no doubt more developers are testing their code before it is loaded into a production environment to hopefully avoid issues that will only become more expensive to fix later. Other organizations have dedicated software engineers to create testing processes that are tightly integrated with CI/CD pipelines, noted Gebregziabher.

However, many large enterprise organizations continue to also hire and retain dedicated application testing teams that are trained to identify issues that might either adversely affect the end-user experience or run afoul of compliance requirements.

Regardless of who does what kind of testing, however, it’s clear there’s a lot more focus on addressing issues earlier when they are much less expensive to fix. The goal should be to make it easier to optimize when tests should run based on probabilities that ultimately reduce the time wasted running tests that either will fail or are, for one reason or another, flawed.

Developers, of course, are all equally committed to running tests, so organizations will need to determine for themselves how far to shift that process left. However, at the very least, DevOps teams should be able to identify patterns that might indicate there is a need for additional developer training. After all, it’s unlikely a developer is going to understand there’s an issue until some meaningful metrics are shared.

In the meantime, the more testing that occurs at a faster rate the more likely it becomes that an organization can provide a superior application experience the first time—and every time—an application is built and deployed.