Shift Left Testing Some tools that can help

Shift Left Testing: Some tools that can help

The Shift Left testing approach is not a new term. Across the globe, more and more organizations are shifting left for various reasons. It’s also regarded as a culture as it allows businesses to instil collaborative work efforts and launch products into the market faster.

This testing approach expedites testing and helps detect bugs in the early stages of development. For teams with a heavy focus on faster time to market and continuous integrations — Shift Left is the way forward.

But, First, What’s Shift Left Testing? 

What's Shift Left Testing?

Source: Tech Arcis

Shift Left is a testing approach where testing begins right from the software development phase. Testers work in tandem with developers and product managers in this testing process to focus on the overall efficiency of the product.

Since the team works towards a common goal, Shift Left allows teams to shift the testing process left during a project timeline and test whenever required to detect and deal with any concerns or bugs in the early phases. With this, you are not just cutting down risks but also time and costs.

Besides, with the growth of CI and CD, it makes more sense to test out the features or any aspects of the software rather than waiting for the final stages.

Benefits of Shift Left

  • Faster time to market as testing happens from the development phase itself.
  • Increased test efficiency.
  • Low-cost affair as you can detect and fix bugs in the initial stages.
  • It facilitates developers and testers to come together and work as a team; testers don’t have to work in isolation any longer.
  • You’ll have more control over your project schedule and delivery timelines, as Shift Left also enables transparency.

Shift Left Testing: Best Testing Tools That Can Help

Without the right testing tools, we cannot fully achieve any desired testing approach. In this post, we’ll discuss the testing tools for adopting Shift Left and why you should choose them. 

Before we proceed, check out our post: is your automation testing tool Shift Left ready?

1. Testsigma: Testsigma is an AI-powered automation testing tool that supports the Shift Left approach. The benefit of using Testsigma is it allows you to write test cases right from the design phase. So, whether your features are conclusive or not — you can start working on your testing approach even without the availability of the application or software.

testsigma

Source: Testsigma

You can write your test scripts in simple English as it’s a codeless testing tool; your test scripts are translated into code by its NLP capabilities. It supports CI/CD integrations with tools such as Bamboo, Jenkins, GitLab, CircleCI, and so on.

Besides, it’s a cloud-based tool that aids remote team collaboration, which is highly crucial for Shift Left. Since the cloud is up and running 24×7, your teams can access the application from any location, any time.

Plus, it comes with thousands of real-time devices on its cloud, with various OS-browser combinations for you to run tests on.

Highlights

  • Supports in-sprint test automation.
  • Parallel test execution: you can prioritize and schedule tests in multiple environments.
  • Testsigma reports bugs and crashes via communication platforms like Slack, Teams, email, etc., for teams to collaborate and fix.
  • Since it’s cloud-based, you can collaborate and review along with the team.
  • It comes with highly customizable reports and an analytics dashboard so you can track and enhance your test and team performance.

Price: Quite affordable; it begins at $99

Get started with Testsigma’s 21-day free trial

2. SauceLabs: Sauce Labs is a cloud-based automation testing tool that supports Shift-Left. This low-code testing tool comes with a Screener that seamlessly integrates visual testing into functional testing workflows.

You can start testing from the design phase itself; Sauce Labs lets you test individual UI components for faster testing, and this also cuts down feedback cycles. You can also gain frontend performance insights much before the software goes live. 

Sauce Labs emphasizes in-sprint testing to focus on the entire software journey and product efficiency and calls itself a customer-centric product. Apart from real devices, it comes with emulators and iOS simulators in its cloud. 

Highlights

  • You can perform in-sprint testing.
  • Supports parallel testing on its cloud
  • You can detect any UI bugs using its Automated Visual Testing feature; it has an extended debugging feature that offers browser console logs, screenshots.
  • It’s cloud-based; your teams can access your product from anywhere, any time, and work in collaboration.
  • It’s equipped with an analytics and reports dashboard that offers real-time test performance results; you can monitor team development and user activity to obtain actionable insights.

Price: It has three types of plans, and the pricing depends on the number of parallel tests you choose. You can check here: https://saucelabs.com/pricing

3. TestLeft: As the name suggests, SmartBear’s TestLift is specifically made for Shift Left testing. With this tool, you can start testing right from the design phase; as soon as the UI features are ready, you can automate your tests.

It supports Visual Studio and Java IDEs such as IntelliJ and Eclipse and lets you develop apps from within the IDE, itself. Besides, it can be integrated with CI/CD tools, and it supports behaviour-driven development.

testleft

Source: TestLeft

Highlights

  • Supports in-sprint test automation.
  • You can perform parallel test execution. 
  • It captures full-page snapshots and shares in-depth test logs and errors for quick debugging.
  • TestLeft has to be installed on your local machine. You can check out the specifications for it here: https://smartbear.com/product/testleft/specifications/
  • It comes with reports and an analytics dashboard that generates performance and tests analysis reports; you can share these with your teams or any stakeholders.

Price: $1,259/year

4. Ranorex Studio Great for beginners and experienced testers — Ranorex is a codeless test automation tool that supports Shift Left. It can be easily integrated with a range of DevOps tools, and it supports tech stacks such as .NET, C#, HTML5, Java, etc.

With Ranorex, you can start testing GUI elements as soon as they’re ready or even user code modules. You can add your Ranorex tests to the CI/CD pipeline too.

Ranorex

Source: Ranorex

Highlights

  • It supports in-sprint testing.
  • You can run tests simultaneously on physical servers, virtual servers, or Selenium grids.
  • Ranorex reports bugs via screenshots and logs. It comes with an in-built image comparison feature that helps you detect UI errors quickly.
  • It’s a cloud-based tool that offers a remote working functionality called Ranorex Remote for teams to collaborate and work from anywhere.
  • It comes with customizable analytics and a reports dashboard that lets you analyze test results via an XML-based test run report.

Price: It’s expensive; it begins at $3,590.

5. Katalon: Katalon Studio is a test automation tool that is particularly built for continuous testing. It can be seamlessly integrated with a range of CI/CD tools, and you can start testing from day one with all the ready-made templates, test case libraries, keywords, and object repositories that Katalon has to offer.

Although it’s a codeless testing tool that’s great for beginners, it offers extensive script extension and customization for experts. Using Katalon, you can test with little knowledge of the app.

With its JIRA integration, anyone on the team (no technical skills required) can fetch requirements from Jira to BDD files, which are integrated into Katalon Studio already.

katalon

Source: Katalon 

Highlights

  • Katalon lets you run tests on multiple devices, browsers, and environments simultaneously.
  • It comes with a superior debugger that accelerates ad hoc inspection and catches bugs, errors, etc., easily.
  • While it’s cloud-based, it can also also be accessed via local machines; remote teams can access the software on the cloud from any geographical location.
  • Its analytics and reports dashboard makes status reports and performance reports with a visual demonstration of test runs, crashes, and performance.

Price: $599 upwards for a year

Those were the five best tools that can help you adopt Shift Left culture in your organization. Let us know which one caught your interest.


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