As Development Velocity and Complexity Increases, What can Development Executives do About Quality?
Complexity, velocity, and visibility are the primary challenges of every software development executive. There is an increasing demand for software teams to deliver software faster; huge efforts are put into automating development and testing efforts, implementing countless tools, methods, techniques and frameworks. But what happened to quality in this process?
The reality is that agile development teams are essentially “flying blind”. They rely on insufficient data when releasing to production, without knowing the real status of the quality of their builds, and no way to control untested code changes that might lead to production failures. Development Executives do not have the necessary visibility to eliminate these quality issues.
As Development Velocity and Complexity Increases, What can Development Executives do About Quality?
Complexity, velocity, and visibility are the primary challenges of every software development executive. There is an increasing demand for software teams to deliver software faster; huge efforts are put into automating development and testing efforts, implementing countless tools, methods, techniques and frameworks. But what happened to quality in this process?
The reality is that agile development teams are essentially “flying blind”. They rely on insufficient data when releasing to production, without knowing the real status of the quality of their builds, and no way to control untested code changes that might lead to production failures. Development Executives do not have the necessary visibility to eliminate these quality issues.
Main Goals of Software Development Executives.
Software development executives aim to achieve the following goals, with respect to managing and improving software quality:
Main Goals of Software Development Executives.
Software development executives aim to achieve the following goals, with respect to managing and improving software quality:
Quality at Speed.
Development executives need a robust way to enforce quality measures at high velocity, across multiple software projects with high complexity and a wide range of tooling and infrastructure.
Test Impact Analysis.
Development executives need a simple, standardized way to accelerate testing without compromising quality. Understanding which tests are impacted by each software change and running only the most appropriate subset of tests, leads to a reduced volume of test executions, faster feedback and reduced testing timeline.
Team Collaboration.
Development executives and fast-paced agile teams must have simple, shared metrics they can use to communicate quality issues and collaborate to prevent production defects.
Achieving True CI/CD.
CI/CD, involving complex microservices environments and cloud-native infrastructure, requires a new approach to quality. Traditional Software Quality Management tools and approaches simply cannot keep up with the pace of change enabled by these new pipelines.
Team Efficiency.
By improving the efficiency of development teams, development executives can deliver more value in less time.
Production Insights.
Few development executives have a clear view whether a lack of testing was the root cause of production defects. The ability to quickly identify untested code running in production allows proactive mitigation of the risk of product outages and associated reputational damage.
Smart Release Decisions.
Development executives must have a way to measure quality and enforce quality policies before any artifact is pushed to production. This means empowering teams with the data they need to make smart, risk-based release decisions.
SeaLights Software Quality Governance.
SeaLights Software Quality Governance is the only solution that can help software development executives automatically identify, manage, and control every perceivable quality risk across the entire end-to-end delivery pipeline, for every single software change.
SeaLights Software Quality Governance.
SeaLights Software Quality Governance is the only solution that can help software development executives automatically identify, manage, and control every perceivable quality risk across the entire end-to-end delivery pipeline, for every single software change.
Risk Analysis of Every Change in Every Build.
Development executives need visibility over all builds in every pipeline to truly control quality. Modern development teams run numerous builds every day; some are good candidates for promotion, while some have severe quality issues.
SeaLights Quality Governance leverages big data and the power of AI/ML to analyze every change in every build, giving executives and teams clear metrics about quality risks. When a build introduces a quality risk, engineering teams automatically receive feedback and can immediately resolve the problem. High-quality builds can be confidently promoted in the pipeline.
Risk Analysis of Every Change in Every Build.
Development executives need visibility over all builds in every pipeline to truly control quality. Modern development teams run numerous builds every day; some are good candidates for promotion, while some have severe quality issues.
SeaLights Quality Governance leverages big data and the power of AI/ML to analyze every change in every build, giving executives and teams clear metrics about quality risks. When a build introduces a quality risk, engineering teams automatically receive feedback and can immediately resolve the problem. High-quality builds can be confidently promoted in the pipeline.
Identify Test Gaps and Prioritize Testing Activity.
Development executives find it difficult to identify which software projects under their responsibility are sufficiently tested. A large number of tests does not mean the relevant parts of the product are effectively tested.
SeaLights Quality Governance analyzes test execution data and correlates it with changes to the codebase and actual production usage, identifying Test Gaps—critical product functionality that is not tested or is missing specific types of tests. Teams can prioritize their investment in testing, and take action to add the missing tests.
Identify Test Gaps and Prioritize Testing Activity.
Development executives find it difficult to identify which software projects under their responsibility are sufficiently tested. A large number of tests does not mean the relevant parts of the product are effectively tested.
SeaLights Quality Governance analyzes test execution data and correlates it with changes to the codebase and actual production usage, identifying Test Gaps—critical product functionality that is not tested or is missing specific types of tests. Teams can prioritize their investment in testing, and take action to add the missing tests.
Perform Risk-Based Test Execution.
Development executives know that reducing build cycles is strategic because it provides developers with faster feedback and increases velocity. If build cycles are long, teams may avoid running tests, which creates quality gaps.
SeaLights Enterprise-Wide Quality Control supports teams and helps them increase velocity without compromising on quality. It provides feedback on which tests are actually needed to verify quality and compliance. This can reduce build cycles by up to 90%.
Perform Risk-Based Test Execution.
Development executives know that reducing build cycles is strategic because it provides developers with faster feedback and increases velocity. If build cycles are long, teams may avoid running tests, which creates quality gaps.
SeaLights Enterprise-Wide Quality Control supports teams and helps them increase velocity without compromising on quality. It provides feedback on which tests are actually needed to verify quality and compliance. This can reduce build cycles by up to 90%.
Enforce Software Quality and Compliance at Every Step in Every Pipeline.
SeaLights helps development executives enforce software quality policies throughout the SDLC and across hundreds of software projects.
SeaLights Enterprise-Wide Software Quality Control performs software quality risk analysis of each pull request and promotion candidate and makes automated decisions based on organizational quality policies.
Enforce Software Quality and Compliance at Every Step in Every Pipeline.
SeaLights helps development executives enforce software quality policies throughout the SDLC and across hundreds of software projects.
SeaLights Enterprise-Wide Software Quality Control performs software quality risk analysis of each pull request and promotion candidate and makes automated decisions based on organizational quality policies.
Leverage Production Insights to Prioritize Risk.
Development executives must be able to trace defects in production systems back to the requirements and code changes that caused those defects, as well as trace forward from current code changes to identify possible risks to production systems.
SeaLights Software Quality Analytics analyzes how users interact with an application. It identifies parts of the codebase that are in active use in production systems and verifies that this code is sufficiently covered by tests. Actively-used functionality which is not sufficiently tested represents a quality risk.
Leverage Production Insights to Prioritize Risk.
Development executives must be able to trace defects in production systems back to the requirements and code changes that caused those defects, as well as trace forward from current code changes to identify possible risks to production systems.
SeaLights Software Quality Analytics analyzes how users interact with an application. It identifies parts of the codebase that are in active use in production systems and verifies that this code is sufficiently covered by tests. Actively-used functionality which is not sufficiently tested represents a quality risk.