Boost your digitalization: build and test infrastructure

The traditional way of software development is to first agree on what to build, then build the functionality and finally commence testing and fixing defects until the quality is at an acceptable level. As anyone who has spent any time in this field knows, no software is ever flawless, but the concept is to get the critical and major defects removed and bring the level of minor defects down to a reasonable number.

As part of the continuous value delivery to customers, we need to push out updates to systems in the field very regularly, ie at least every four weeks but potentially much more frequently. To be able to do so without causing major quality issues requires a different approach to system quality. The basic principle is that the software, as well as the system as a whole, is always at production quality and we never allow the quality to drop below that level.

To achieve this, for every check-in of new code to the source code control system, we need to verify that it doesn’t cause any quality concerns. This requires that we build the new executable and then test it to ensure that no defects were introduced, meaning that the preexisting functionality still works as intended and that the new code works as intended.