What are the best practices for managing test data and test environments in a DevOps culture?

1 Use synthetic data

Synthetic data is data that is artificially generated to mimic real data, but without exposing sensitive or confidential information. Synthetic data can help you overcome some of the common issues with test data, such as data scarcity, data privacy, data relevance, and data diversity. By using synthetic data, you can create realistic and representative test scenarios that cover a wide range of cases and conditions, without compromising the security or quality of your data. Synthetic data can also be easily scaled and updated to match your changing testing needs and requirements.

2 Automate test data provisioning

Test data provisioning is the process of creating, preparing, and delivering test data to the test environments where they are needed. Automating this process can help you save time, resources, and effort, as well as reduce errors and inconsistencies. By automating test data provisioning, you can ensure that your test data is always available, accurate, and aligned with your test cases and objectives. You can also integrate test data provisioning with your DevOps pipeline, so that your test data is synchronized with your code changes and deployments.

3 Isolate test environments

Test environments are the settings where you run your tests, such as development, staging, or production. Isolating test environments means creating separate and independent instances of your test environments, so that they do not interfere with each other or with the live system. Isolating test environments can help you avoid conflicts, dependencies, and contamination that can affect your testing results and performance. You can also isolate test environments by using containers, virtual machines, or cloud services, which can provide more flexibility, scalability, and security for your testing activities.

4 Monitor and maintain test environments

Monitoring and maintaining test environments means keeping track of the status, performance, and configuration of your test environments, and ensuring that they are functioning properly and efficiently. Monitoring and maintaining test environments can help you identify and resolve any issues or anomalies that can affect your testing quality and speed. You can also use tools and metrics to measure and optimize your test environment performance, such as resource utilization, availability, reliability, and throughput.

5 Share and reuse test environments

Sharing and reusing test environments means making your test environments accessible and reusable by different teams, projects, or phases of the testing life cycle. Sharing and reusing test environments can help you reduce costs, waste, and duplication, as well as improve collaboration and communication among your testing stakeholders. You can also use tools and platforms that enable you to manage, share, and reuse test environments across your DevOps pipeline, such as environment as a service (EaaS) or test environment management (TEM) solutions.

6 Document and audit test environments

Documenting and auditing test environments means recording and reviewing the details, specifications, and history of your test environments, such as the software versions, hardware components, network configurations, test data sources, and test results. Documenting and auditing test environments can help you ensure compliance, accountability, and traceability of your testing processes and outcomes. You can also use tools and standards that help you document and audit your test environments, such as configuration management database (CMDB) or ISO/IEC 29119.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?