The journey to continuous compliance for software development

Abstract

There is no such thing as completely bulletproof code, but it is the unattainable goal we try to reach, in an effort to surpass our own selves and elevate the quality of our code. By establishing Quality Assurance (QA) procedures we shield ourselves - our software and our team - from mistakes, misconceptions and oversights. Making assumptions about the well-being of the code and the results it produces is detrimental to the well-being of a corporation, a business, an organization, or frankly to the reputation of any kind of engineering team. Therefore, it is crucial that meaningful processes are in place to ensure our goals are met. Automation has been a great addition to the armory of developers for years now; using it can help not only save time in coding a new feature and increase accuracy of the outcome but also report test results sooner. This thesis presents articles related to various aspects of Quality Assurance (QA) and compliance, including automated testing and CI process, as well as focuses on concerns and ideas regarding relevant issues, such as the cost of bug fixes and bias introduced to code. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to more practical aspects of automation in QA, by providing detailed step-by-step instructions for methodologies with which teams can approach automated testing and can start introducing automated tests for existing software, as well as how a test suite can be meaningfully evaluated by employing factors of effectiveness and quality of its test cases (rather than merely examining the coverage it provides, meaning the rather theoretical estimation of how much code is being tested).