The term DevOps implies that software delivery is all about integrating the development and IT operations teams. But the software testing team is an important, if oft-overlooked, part of the picture. Here’s why.

Could you deliver software continuously without involving the QA team in the continuous delivery pipeline? You could try, but it would probably not go well. Software testers play a vital role in continuous delivery, for the following reasons:

They are the glue connecting developers to IT Ops. If there is no one to test the code that developers write, IT Ops cannot deliver a stable product.

They help find problems before they become costly. If you skimp on integration, unit and performance tests, you won’t find problems in your software until after it reaches users. By that point, fixing those problems will be much more time-intensive than it would if they had been caught early on. Plus, your organization’s reputation will have taken a hit, because problems that could have been nipped in the bud prior to delivery ended up affecting users.

They know things that developers and IT Ops don’t. If DevOps is all about continuous visibility across the delivery chain, then it only works well when the delivery team’s collective expertise covers all parts of the delivery process. Since developers and IT Ops people are not experts in quality assurance or testing, you need to involve testing professionals in the continuous delivery chain so that they can help everyone else understand the parts of the process that QA professionals know in detail.

All of the above is to say that if the QA team is not plugged into every stage of the delivery process, your software either won’t be tested efficiently, or it won’t be tested at all. Not testing efficiently means that the QA team is not in sync with the rest of the organization. In this case, the QA team would delay software delivery because it would have to wait on developers and admins to complete its work, and vice versa.

Not testing at all, of course, is even worse. No one should deliver unvetted software to users.

Don’t Forget about QA

The takeaway for organizations seeking to adopt DevOps practices is this: Even though the DevOps conversation on the surface may seem to be about only developers and IT Ops professionals, QA teams play an equally crucial role in continuous delivery. They need to be as involved in the continuous delivery pipeline as everyone else if an organization wishes to reap the full benefits of DevOps.

— Chris Tozzi