Best practices for continuous testing with Datadog

This text discusses continuous testing (CT), which is the process of verifying application functionality at every stage of software development life cycle (SDLC). It highlights that CT helps in finding and resolving issues sooner, ensuring that applications work as expected for customers. The stages where CT verifies functionality include Develop, Integrate, Deliver, and Release. The text also explains how continuous integration (CI) enables developers to build and test code changes automatically at regular intervals. It further elaborates on continuous delivery (CD) and continuous deployment (CD), which extend CI workflows by automating pre-release and production cycles. The post then delves into strategies for ensuring efficient running of test suites across all stages of development, such as creating reusable tests for environments, streamlining test runs by executing them in parallel, and integrating tests across all development stages. Datadog Continuous Testing is mentioned as a tool that supports these strategies at every stage. It enables running the same group of steps in any dedicated environment with customizable start URLs and variables for environment needs via subtests. The text also discusses how parallel testing can significantly reduce execution times by launching multiple tests simultaneously, and provides tips on determining the right number of tests to run in parallel based on factors like customer activity locations, devices and browsers supported, development team size, release frequency, etc. Lastly, it emphasizes integrating tests with CI/CD platforms for visibility into both code and test activity, and mentions that Datadog Continuous Testing is deeply integrated with other Datadog tools to provide end-to-end visibility into development workflows.