7 Ways Salesforce Testing Tools Expand Your DevOps Potential
Salesforce testing tools are a critical aspect of an optimized DevOps approach that provides security, productivity, and quality benefits.
Why It Matters: Human error is unavoidable. Automating crucial DevOps testing functions guarantees total coverage and reliability.
- An overwhelming 88% of data breaches are caused by human error.
- Manually testing thousands of lines of code takes your team members away from furthering other projects, while reducing the reliability of the results.
Here are seven ways Salesforce testing tools increase productivity, reliability, and security in your Salesforce DevOps pipeline:
- Perfect Code Reduces Rework
- Automated Testing Provides Total Coverage
- Continuous Integration Ensures Immediate Attention
- Sandbox Management Streamlines Collaboration
- Success Metrics Point to Potential Improvements
- Reliable Testing Supports Regulatory Compliance
- Verified Functionality Guarantees Proper Performance
1. Perfect Code Reduces Rework
Static code analysis is a critical Salesforce testing tool that supports your DevOps team in a variety of ways. One major pain point solved by this type of testing is that your team won’t need to work backwards to fix previous errors.
Static code analysis guarantees flawless code, immediately identifying issues such as code smells, improper structures, and security vulnerabilities.
Getting it right the first time lets your team focus on moving applications toward deployment.
2. Automated Testing Provides Total Coverage
Have you ever put off a task with the idea you’ll eventually get to it but forgot to circle back? This happens more often than we would like. Automating these tasks reduces manual effort and ensures faster feedback loops.
Salesforce testing tools enable the automation of repetitive testing tasks, such as unit tests, integration tests, and regression tests.
Comprehensive coverage is critical for ensuring no quality or security vulnerabilities slip between the cracks.
3. Continuous Integration Ensures Immediate Attention
Automating manual processes eliminates any guesswork on if an action will be completed.
Continuous integration tools ensure all changes are automatically tested upon every code commit so nothing slips between the cracks.
Multiple layers of testing will have a much better chance at catching potentially harmful errors before they reach a live environment.
4. Sandbox Management Streamlines Collaboration
Large development teams are a great asset for quickly pushing through DevOps projects. However, if their efforts aren’t properly aligned, you can run into code overwrites or incongruous code updates.
Sandboxes are used for development and testing, which can be created and managed with the help of Salesforce testing tools.
Properly managing these sandboxes—along with a reliable version control tool—ensures stable and secure environments across the development life cycle.
5. Success Metrics Point to Potential Improvements
Testing tools are great for gathering metrics and statistics for successes at different stages of the application life cycle. These metrics are gathered as the tools pass or fail a particular piece of data.
Consistent failures in a particular part of the DevOps pipeline points to opportunities for improvement, and support the surrounding stages of the application life cycle as well.
Constant refinement will improve your approach over time, increasing ROI as well as release velocity.
6. Reliable Testing Supports Regulatory Compliance
Organizations operating in regulated industries have heightened needs for security, quality, and documentation.
Automated testing tools can be used to verify adherence to internal policies in compliance with regulations.
The benefits of enforcing governance policies extend beyond compliance, but this is a major benefit of comprehensive visibility.
7. Verified Functionality Guarantees Proper Performance
Your team might be able to put together a slick-looking update, but how is it going to perform in a live environment? Any guesswork at this stage can lead to problematic deployments.
Salesforce testing tools include capabilities for performance testing, allowing developers to assess the scalability and responsiveness of their applications under different load conditions.
Not only is this information nice to have for peace of mind, but it also allows you to conserve resources by reworking an update that is found to be faulty. Adequate testing gives your team the capability to only deploy updates you know will perform as intended.
Next Step…
A streamlined Salesforce DevOps pipeline is a huge asset, but only if the applications and updates that come out of it are reliable and secure.
Check out our ebook, Bulletproofing Your Salesforce DevOps: Advanced Security Strategies, to learn more about what you can do to ensure your Salesforce data remains protected in the face of evolving data security threats.
FAQs
What are the most common types of Salesforce testing tools?
There are a ton of Salesforce testing tools. However, you can break these tools down into larger buckets that address critical aspects of your Salesforce DevOps environment. This includes unit testing tools that can be used to test individual code units, integration testing tools for testing interactions between components, and functional testing tools for assessing user interfaces and workflows. Performance-testing tools evaluate scalability and responsiveness, while code-quality analysis tools ensure adherence to coding standards. Sandbox management tools facilitate environment provisioning, and data management tools aid in handling test data. Deployment automation, continuous integration, and continuous deployment tools streamline the development and deployment processes, fostering efficiency and reliability throughout the Salesforce development life cycle.
How long does it take for testing tools to balance out their cost?
There is no one-to-one metric that can be used to quantify the costs saved by your testing tools. It’s the combination of a series of factors, including the increase in speed during these processes, the elimination of redundant work, the value of avoiding costly errors, and any security vulnerabilities that were prevented by eliminating human error. An argument can be made that these benefits combine to balance out implementation costs shortly after the tool is fully integrated within the DevOps pipeline, but the actual numbers will depend on the scale of the operation, the types of tools sourced, and the size of the development team.
Should I source my testing tools from a singular vendor, or can I use multiple sources?
Piecing together a series of tools might seem like it enables a DevOps team to get exactly what they want, but this approach creates problems in the actual day-to-day interaction with the software. As we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of Salesforce testing tools that can benefit your organization. But if all these tools are from different vendors, they won’t seamlessly integrate with each other, which creates opportunities for quality and security considerations to fall through the cracks. Using a comprehensive testing platform ensures everything works smoothly.
