Full Stack Testing, 2nd Edition

Foreword to the First Edition

The term shift left, which refers to performing an activity earlier or to the left along a timeline, is becoming increasingly common. We hear about why it is important to shift left design, security, and, most relevant here, testing. Bringing testing forward in the software development life cycle decreases the cost and complexity of fixing bugs because they are found closer to when they were created, which establishes more of a context for what could have caused things to go wrong. When we think about things like performance testing, we can start looking for trends before we start actually worrying about the specific values. This again allows us to spot when performance worsens significantly. We can then explore if this means that we’ve hit something that is fundamentally less performant or if perhaps we just made a mistake that caused the performance degradation.

While shifting testing left means tests are run against software that is known to be incomplete and subject to change, the enhanced ability to fix issues that arise far outweighs the costs of continuous testing, particularly when a significant portion of the test suite is automated. While some tests and some styles of testing, like exploratory testing, need to be done manually, tests that can be automated should be.

There are all kinds of testing to be done, and the title of Gayathri’s book is apt. Full stack testing gives a comprehensive overview of testing across the entire stack, looking ...