The answer to all these issues? Shift-left testing.

Simply put, this is what Shift Left means – shifting integration testing to the left of its usual position in the delivery pipeline so that it occurs as close as possible to the build process. By proactively testing high-risk integrations early and frequently, delivery teams can isolate the most disruptive, significant defects sooner for faster remediation.

This helps team’s focus on quality from day one of the project, rather than waiting for defects to be uncovered late in the software development life-cycle. The goal is to increase quality, shorten long test cycles, and reduce the possibility of unpleasant surprises at the end of the development cycle – or still worse, in production.

Waiting for all the pieces to become available before testing commences can cause delays, adds risk to the project or results in discovery of late stage defects when they are more expensive to fix.

Shift Left practices help to avoid rework, delays and churn that can occur when major defects are discovered late in the testing cycle – If any of the dependent application components are not available to test, virtual services can mimic the real components behavior until they are ready.

Teams that continuously test their code against integrated components can have better outcomes in reducing risk, as they are better able to find and fix potentially disruptive defects earlier in the lifecycle.

Avoiding unpleasant surprises late in the development lifecycle is an important benefit of shifting integration tests to the left, but there is another important benefit. Continuously delivering, building and testing in a tightly operationalized fashion allows the delivery team to receive feedback on code quality non-stop.