By Nikhil Mishra
Introduction: In today’s fast-paced software industry, DevOps practices prioritise rapid and reliable delivery of new features. Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are central to this approach, automating the integration, testing and deployment of code so that updates reach users quickly. Organisations that adopt mature CI/CD pipelines see tangible gains: one study found they enjoy around 25% faster lead times and about 50% fewer failures compared to teams without such practices. Maintaining this speed requires robust quality assurance throughout development. Continuous testing – the practice of running automated tests at every stage – provides just that, catching defects immediately and ensuring releases are reliable. By combining CI, CD and continuous testing, enterprises can scale their DevOps efforts, accelerating innovation without sacrificing quality.
Importance of CI/CD/CT in DevOps
CI, CD and continuous testing work together to transform software development. Continuous Integration means developers frequently merge their code changes into a shared repository. Each merge triggers an automated build and test cycle, so issues are detected at once rather than months later. Continuous Delivery (or Deployment) then takes validated code and automatically releases it to production or staging environments, often multiple times per day. These practices eliminate manual hand-offs and error-prone steps, enabling teams to respond to customer needs much more rapidly. As one analysis notes, CI/CD forms an “end-to-end loop stretching from the beginning of development to delivery,” empowering teams to ship more often and with greater confidence.
Continuous Testing is equally essential. In a traditional model, testing might occur only after coding is complete, creating a bottleneck. In contrast, continuous testing embeds automated validation into the pipeline itself. Tests – ranging from unit tests to system tests – run automatically with each build or deployment. This provides immediate feedback to developers: code that fails the test suite never reaches production. Such rapid verification is crucial to DevOps goals. Industry research highlights that continuous quality practices are on the rise: Gartner predicts that by 2026 some 70% of teams will adopt a continuous testing mindset (up from only 20% today). In other words, organisations are increasingly recognising that CI/CD alone is not enough – they must continuously test their work to deliver both speed and quality.
Pipeline Overview
A CI/CD pipeline is essentially a flexible, automated workflow for moving code from development into production. Instead of a linear sequence, this pipeline is iterative: code is committed, validated, deployed and then the cycle repeats. Typical stages include compiling the code, running automated tests, and deploying to environments. For example, once code is integrated, a unit testing suite runs in the build stage to catch simple errors early. If those pass, the pipeline might deploy to a test or staging environment where further integration or acceptance tests execute. Each step is wired to run automatically when the previous step succeeds. This seamless flow allows teams to “write the code, integrate it, perform diagnostics, [and] deliver releases…in real time”.Automation is key to the pipeline’s power. Every manual intervention or hand-off is replaced by scripts and tools that instantly perform work. As a result, the pipeline ensures code quality while accelerating progress. For instance, the use of automated unit tests within the pipeline pinpoints bugs as soon as they are introduced. Moreover, the flexibility of this workflow means infrastructure (such as databases or servers) can be provisioned automatically alongside code, reducing human error and configuration drift. In practice, a well-designed pipeline allows teams to deploy updates multiple times per day with high confidence, because each change has been vetted through repeatable, automated processes.
Role of Continuous Testing
Continuous testing means running automated tests throughout development, not just at the end. By integrating testing into the CI/CD pipeline, every change is immediately checked for defects. In other words, testing becomes continuous rather than episodic. This approach reduces the risk that bugs will be discovered late, when they are costly to fix. Early feedback is provided to developers as soon as code is written, enabling them to correct errors while the changes are still fresh in mind.
These automated tests cover multiple layers of the application. Unit tests form the base of the testing strategy: they verify individual functions or methods in the code. Unit tests are quick and inexpensive to run, offering a “good first-pass” quality check. They are typically written in the same language as the application and are executed at build time. If a unit test fails, the pipeline halts immediately, saving time by preventing further steps on broken code. Next come integration tests, which verify that different modules or services work together correctly. These tests might be written in different languages or frameworks, and require the code to be deployed in an environment so that it can exercise public interfaces or APIs. Finally, end-to-end (E2E) tests simulate real user scenarios from start to finish, involving the user interface and all connected components. While E2E tests provide comprehensive coverage, they are the most time-consuming and expensive to maintain.
A common best practice is the test pyramid: many fast, low-level tests and progressively fewer high-level tests. In a balanced approach, the bulk of testing is done with unit and integration tests, with a limited number of broad E2E tests. This pyramid strategy maximises efficiency and reliability. By continuously running a layered suite of tests in this way, teams can detect issues at the most appropriate level and keep the pipeline running smoothly. Overall, continuous testing weaves quality assurance into every stage, ensuring that CI/CD processes do not trade speed for defects.
Industry Trends and Benefits
Across the industry, investment in DevOps automation and testing is surging. Organisations report clear returns from these practices. For example, about 60% of companies using test automation say they see significant improvements in overall application quality. In real terms, most development teams now rely on automation to catch bugs quickly – over 70% of test professionals use automated tests to identify issues at the earliest opportunity. Reflecting this priority, nearly three-quarters of companies dedicate a large slice of their QA budget (10–49%) to test automation tools and platforms. These figures show that automated testing is no longer optional but an integral part of modern workflows.The broader market echoes this growth. One forecast predicts the global continuous testing market will expand at a 16.7% compound annual growth rate, from about $9.61 billion in 2025 to $38.5 billion by 2034. Such growth is driven by the widespread adoption of agile and DevOps methods. As one report notes, the demand for faster delivery and higher software quality is the primary driver of this trend. In practice, faster delivery and higher quality reinforce each other: automated testing accelerates the release cycle, and rapid releases provide more feedback on quality.
Emerging technologies are shaping the future of continuous testing as well. Industry analysts estimate that by 2026 a large majority of development teams will embrace what Gartner calls “continuous quality” practices. This means tools and strategies that apply automated checks throughout development – from planning to production monitoring. Many organisations are also exploring AI-assisted testing (though adoption is still below 50% in many firms). Such advances promise to further improve efficiency and defect detection. In sum, the trend is clear: to stay competitive, enterprises are moving towards fully automated, continuously tested pipelines, and the business benefits in speed, reliability and team productivity are already being realised.
Scaling Continuous Testing with ApMoSys’ cliQTest™
As DevOps pipelines grow in size and complexity, scaling testing becomes a challenge. ApMoSys addresses this with cliQTest™, a modern test automation platform designed for continuous testing at scale. cliQTest™ provides a scriptless (no-code) environment, allowing testers and developers to create and maintain automated tests via a visual interface instead of writing code. This dramatically reduces test development time and lowers the barrier for team members who are less technical to contribute tests.The platform integrates seamlessly with CI/CD workflows. It can automatically trigger test suites whenever code is built or deployed, so quality checks remain continuous. cliQTest™ also includes access to a cloud-based device lab (supporting hundreds of real mobile devices and desktop browsers), enabling organisations to run their tests under realistic conditions across many configurations. As tests execute, cliQTest™ captures results in real time and uses built-in intelligence to highlight actionable insights – for example, pinpointing which tests failed and why.
By automating even complex test scenarios without traditional scripting, cliQTest™ helps teams expand their testing coverage with minimal manual effort. Development and QA can iterate on tests together in the same platform, enhancing collaboration. The result is that as organisations add more services or platforms to their pipelines, they do not need to proportionally increase headcount just to maintain quality. In essence, cliQTest™ acts as a “testing co-pilot”: it accelerates test creation, execution and analysis, enabling continuous testing to keep pace with continuous integration and delivery.