Best Practices of QA in a DevOps

• QA and testing teams should be part of technical teams. They have to move beyond manual functional testing and should focus their efforts on automation and testing strategies. QA becomes the enabler of quality across SDLC. 
• Quality needs to be well-defined in order to meet requirements. Rather than trying to achieve perfection in software, QA should move towards focusing on accomplishing satisfying user experience within the given time frame. 
• Metrics that measure quality have to be laid down and measured. Such metrics should detect software defects early in the development cycle. 
• Goals of individual and teams need to be optimized. Organizations need to strengthen necessary behavior and cultural shift by incentivizing quality assurance. 
• Requirements need to be specific. QA teams should proactively involve in the requirements process to help and guide development teams towards proper direction. 
• QA & testing should focus more on automated regression testing on critical areas such as key software functionality. 
• QA & testing has to move towards leveraging automation tools to automate testing wherever possible. 
• Development, operations, and QA teams should be facilitated and encouraged to communicate, collaborate, and optimize their efforts. 
• Continuous integration is the key to identifying defects early in the development lifecycle. For continuous integration to be implemented effectively, all the stakeholders have to integrate their work often on a day-to-day basis. 
• A fully automated continuous testing process needs to be integrated into the SDLC for a successful continuous delivery process that minimizes risks, reduces costs, and accelerates time to market by frequent releases.