Streamlining Release Cycles with Test Automation in CI/CD Pipeline

About Client

 

The client is a social engagement and advocacy platform that empowers brands to connect with their ambassador and manage campaigns across multiple social media and digital platforms. They partnered with us to enhance the quality and efficiency of their application testing process.

 

 

Our Solution

 

Automated Testing Strategy

 

After analysing the application, we chose Selenium Webdriver to automate the web application. Our first goal was to automate over 150 test cases that covered all major happy path scenarios across the platform. 

To ensure better manageability and execution efficiency, we categorized the test scripts into smoke and regression suites based on functionality and business impact.

We developed about 50 automation scripts that covered those test cases and executed them locally before every release, which helped significantly reduce manual regression efforts and ensured each release maintained a consistent standard of quality and stability.

 

Introducing Automation in the CI/CD pipeline

 

While locally executing the automation suite improved testing quality, we took it a step further by integrating automated tests directly into the CI/CD pipeline. Since the client was already using an Azure DevOps pipeline for deployments, we integrated our automation scripts into this existing infrastructure.

To enhance stability and reduce potential flakiness in UI-based tests, we identified scenarios that were better suited for backend validation and test data setup. These scenarios were then rewritten as API automation scripts and integrated into the existing automation suite. This transition not only improved the reliability of the tests but also accelerated the feedback cycle.

 

Streamlined CI/CD Workflow

 

Continuous Integration (CI)

 

Whenever developers merged new features, bug fixes, or enhancements into the Prod-Staging branch, the CI pipeline was automatically triggered. This pipeline executed both smoke and regression test suites, validating the new changes against existing functionality. 

 

Continuous Delivery (CD)

 

Once the automated validations on the staging environment passed, the application was promoted to the Prod-Main environment. Post-deployment, we conducted a quick manual smoke test on the live environment to verify the stability and functionality of critical features.

This hybrid testing approach, combining automated validation pre-deployment and manual checks post-deployment, ensured both speed and confidence during production releases. It ensured minimal downtime, reduced deployment risk, and accelerated approval cycles for new updates.

 

Result Achieved

 

The integration of automation testing into the CI/CD pipeline provided significant advantages for the client:

> Manual regression testing time was drastically reduced from 8-10 hours to just 4 hours, freeing up QA resources to focus on exploratory and edge case testing.

> Ensured consistent and comprehensive test coverage across all releases. 

> Enabled the team to deploy updates more frequently without compromising quality.

> Provided reliable and repeatable validation for every deployment, ensuring stability.

> Developers received faster feedback on their changes, helping to identify and resolve issues early in the development cycle.

> The combination of automated and manual checks resulted in stable releases with minimal post-deployment issues.

 

Conclusion

 

By automating all happy path test cases and integrating them into the CI/CD pipeline, we made the client’s release process faster, more reliable, and scalable. This change reduced the need for repetitive manual testing and allowed for continuous validation of code changes. With a mix of UI automation, backend API tests, and CI/CD integration, the client saw faster releases, more confident deployments, and a quicker time-to-market. This helped their team deliver high-quality updates more often and with minimal post-release issues.