Early Bug Detection through Shift Left Testing

Shift-Left Testing is a preventive approach in the SW development process of identifying and handling defects where testing is performed before the flow proceeds to the subsequent phases of SDLC. In most situations, testing is done after development, and this means that any defects get discovered later contributing to high costs and more time to complete the project. Essentially, Shift-Left Testing implies that testing should be conducted during the design or the coding stage and is beneficial due to the fact that in those stages of development, it is considerably less expensive to rectify problems that are detected. It uses integrated strategies including continuous integration, static code analysis and automated testing, in which the development and the test team work together from the start. Consequently, the approach results in enhanced quality of the software, their development time, and minimization of the post-release faults. Although Shift-Left Testing is changing many ways in software development for the better, it has some problems, for instance, changing organizational culture and has high demands to test automation frameworks.