Many early phase DevOps initiatives are focused on the areas of Continuous Integration, Builds, and Deployments, as these are often the most visible and “active” segments of the pipeline. The more “invisible” hand of resistance that often goes unnoticed until too late is that no matter how fast and efficient the implementation of a full Continuous Delivery solution is, audit and upper management will never allow it to reach “full throttle” unless and until they are convinced that the process itself will yield higher quality releases that minimize defects being introduced and don’t jeopardize existing operations.
This comfort level, and its resulting drop in the need for overly burdensome checkpoints and approvals, can only be achieved once testing is fully and increasingly inserted directly and automatically into the delivery pipeline.
It’s very simple: the less automated testing injected into the process, the more the increase in delay due to manual testing, management oversight through verification and validation of that testing, and a final series of sign-offs and approvals that all boxes have been checked.
THIS is the Achilles heel that will doom even the most well thought-out plans for automating the delivery pipeline. Rapidiant understands this exceedingly well and makes every effort to engage all internal quality management personnel and control groups to ensure the testing function keeps up the same pace as the more visible build and deploy functions.