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The shift left testing essentially means “test often, and start as early as possible.” The “shift left” testing movement is about pushing testing toward the early stages of software development. By testing early and often, a project can reduce the number of bugs and increase the quality of the code. The goal is to not find any critical bugs during the deployment phase that require code patching.

Shift-left testing advocates that testing should be placed at the start of development, instead of at its end. In true software agile development, there shouldn’t be phases, but instead continuous activities occurring in short, iterative cycles. Shift left testing in agile is all about small code increments. The agile methodology includes testing as an integral part of the shorter development cycle. Therefore, shift left testing fits nicely into the agile idea. The testing engineer has to perform testing after each code increment—often referred to as a two-week sprint.

Some organizations like to push shift left testing even further toward the coding phase. A good approach to adopt is test-driven development. Test-driven development requires you to first write the tests for the piece of code you want to develop. Therefore, you can immediately verify the validity of your code.

Another way of pushing testing further left includes the use of static analysis tools. A static analysis tool helps to identify problems with parameter types or incorrect usage of interfaces.

Furthermore, testing experts believe that behavior-driven development (BDD) can accelerate the shift left movement. BDD defines a common design language that can be understood by all stakeholders, such as product owners, testing engineers, and developers. Therefore, it enables all involved stakeholders to simultaneously work on the same product feature, accelerating the team’s agility.

Benefits of Shift Left Testing

So, what are the benefits of shift left testing?

• Find bugs early on in the software development life cycle
• Reduce the cost of solving bugs by detecting them early on
• Gain a higher-quality product as the code contains fewer patches and code fixes
• Have fewer chances that the product overshoots the estimated timeline
• Provide higher customer satisfaction as the code is stable and delivered within the budget
• Maintain higher-quality codebase

Another great benefit of shift left testing is the ability to use test automation tools. As we want to test early and often, test automation helps you accomplish this goal. We don’t want to overload our testing team with manually testing every new feature the development team introduces.

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You can read more about Shift Left Testing here.

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