There are already too many memes about testing in production. Image by WikiImages/Pixabay

Shifting Testing Right: Testing in Production

It was only a few years ago that any mention of “testing in production” made anyone involved in software engineering to dry heave. Nevertheless, it still happened. Software Engineers would test in Production quite often, but just not tell anyone. This seemingly reckless code deployment strategy caused a lot of problems and caused anyone involved in Software Development to baulk at those 4 words — “we test in Production”.

But times have changed. These days there is an abundance of tools that monitor, log, analyse data, automate critical error-prone parts of deployments, allow releases to Production to be broken up into more manageable chunks. There is also the DevOps ideology — that brings all of the painful parts of a software release into joyous harmony. And with all this harmonious joy it allows us to do things like testing in production.

However, the name is not really what it suggests. Testing still needs to happen at every stage of a product’s lifecycle. It doesn’t mean that it is ok for no testing to happen — far from it — it is just a new way of looking at…