Testing in Production: Risks, Benefits, and Best Practices

Testing in production might sound like a developer or tester’s worst nightmare. However, in the tech industry, testing in production is becoming more and more prevalent even though many people are still skeptical about the whole issue. But it’s important to be clear on what this process is to avoid misunderstandings.

Testing in production does not imply delivering untested features and hoping for the best. Hope and luck are not strategies. A robust QA plan must still ensure that testing occurs early in the development stage while leveraging manual software testing and other automated testing methodologies. That is to say, in-production testing is meant to supplement rather than replace testing in a pre-production environment.

The execution of software tests in a live environment is referred to as production testing. Because it reflects the real world, it is a good approach to software testing. Due to variable configurations, controlled settings, and the absence of other realistic elements like real data and traffic, a test run in a non-production environment may produce deceptive results. Although test environments are designed to mimic production environments, there are some limitations to what can be duplicated in a staging environment.

The Risks of Testing in Production

Testing in production is becoming an important part of the equation as companies move to employ development methodologies like DevOps or Continuous Integration and Delivery. As with any new strategy, it is vital to consider the risks, the rewards, and best practices before diving head first into testing in production.

The way you test in production is determined by the application and what you’re testing. To minimize the risks, several things must be in order, regardless of the testing environment. Businesses could lose transactions or have test data mixed in with production data. The biggest risk of testing in production is the commercial risk. A negative user experience, security issues, or system crashes can all result in financial losses or damage to a company’s reputation.

Other risks include exposing vulnerabilities in business-critical processes, losing data, and relying on end-users to provide feedback on defects. In that case, most people will just exit the application with a poor perception of the product and without bothering to complete and send an error report.

There is always a right and wrong way to approach new processes. Taking what you’ve done in pre-production or staging and trying to put it into a live production environment could be a problem. There are lots of ways that production testing might go wrong, and if you can anticipate at least half of them, you’re better prepared.

The Benefits of Testing in Production

In an ideal world, all developers would hope that by the time their software solution reaches production, all bugs will have been fixed and no additional testing is required. In the actual world, however, every rational and experienced developer understands this isn’t possible.

There is only one way to find all of the flaws in the production code, and that is to test it in production. Of course, testing your product throughout the early stages of development is essential, but it is not always enough.

Testing in production allows you to conduct an in-depth product review in a real-world setting, and it is the only method to confirm that the system performs as expected. DevOps can realize a range of benefits with testing in production.

Beta Releases

Implementing production testing in your solution’s product beta release allows developers to get early feedback on newly released features. Beta releases also provide users with immediate feedback on user experience issues.

Live Monitoring and Quick Detection

Monitoring app performance in real-time as real users alter data and interact with the app is a smart idea. Developers can examine app performance while having access to all data in this way. Some developers are afraid to use testing in production because they believe it would disrupt real-world app users’ experiences and jeopardize data security and stability. However, it allows developers to spot and solve flaws faster than users can report them.

Predict the Unpredictable

You won’t be able to test every single user interaction situation before the product is released, no matter how hard you try. Developers can monitor app performance in real-world scenarios by testing in production. The only area where developers can monitor and address bugs that arise during unexpected interactions in the app is in production.

Continuous Feedback

Developers can analyze how the user experience changes and how users react to it using live production traffic and user data. Developers may speed up the testing and code integration processes by testing in production, allowing them to polish the app more quickly and effectively.

Post-Release Testing and Production Verification

From development to production, a well-established DevOps approach combined with the correct testing tools and a post-production strategy can ensure a seamless operation. For effective post-release testing and product verification, it’s important to include tasks such as reporting on issues found and an impact analysis. Detailed testing is carried out in the QA cycle and a post-production release verification test plan should form part of the complete test plan for each release.

The importance of product verification is to have a well-structured plan. Critical and priority tests can be run first, with findings and any difficulties communicated to stakeholders. If no severe issues are discovered, post-production release verification can proceed; otherwise, a rollback decision must be made to minimize application downtime and reduce the impact on live clients.

Best Practices for Testing in Production

In today’s agile era, development results in smaller, more frequent releases. Although such practices eliminate some risks, the valued frequency increases the possibility of releasing vulnerable code into the wild. Meanwhile, testing in production can improve the effectiveness of your app testing approach if you do it right. The following practices are often helpful.

Using Feature Flags

Feature flags allow the testing of new features in production that can be rolled back using a ‘kill switch’ if necessary. Because it’s difficult to fully imitate the production environment in staging, feature flags let you test new components in the real world while reducing risk.

Timing is Everything

Running a load test during business hours has a bigger impact on user experience than if tests were run during the evening, non-business hours, and during maintenance windows.

Monitoring

This is essential to see what is happening on the servers or in the databases. Good monitoring is an absolute requirement for successful testing in production.

Performance Testing

Performance testing is a typical production testing method for determining an application’s performance, speed, scalability, and reliability while identifying bottlenecks.

Stress Testing

Stress testing determines how much traffic a website can handle before it crashes. It frequently entails testing beyond the norm in order to determine how well the website will stand up under extreme situations. It also seeks to see if the website will employ good error management procedures in these challenging circumstances. It also focuses on determining how the app functions when the load suddenly increases or decreases.

Sanity Testing

Sanity testing determines if the new features work and if previous bugs were fixed. The emphasis is to ensure changes introduced to the system work as expected. It does encompass an in-depth testing of the entire application.

Regression Testing

Automating regression testing during production verifies that any changes don’t impact the existing functionality. A robust set of unit-level regression tests acts as a safety net. Continuous regression testing that runs 24/7 ensures immediate notification of issues so developers can react and resolve them quickly.

To Sum Up

The number of production releases has increased since most software businesses have adopted the Agile approach. Every production release has the potential to affect live functionality. To ensure the reliability of any application, it is essential that all changes are verified in production immediately after deployment. If these issues are not caught before the clients are impacted, it can be devastating to the reputation of any software company. To avoid the worst scenarios and set up the whole testing process properly, companies need to hire QA engineers as soon as possible.