How can continuous integration and manual testing work together?

Question

I am implementing continuous integration (Jenkins) and deployment in my project. We are doing manual testing.

My requirements are as below.

1. The files will be moved to the QA server after development.
2. After the testing the files will be moved to UAT and from there to production.

Can anyone suggest how to automate the process here since we are following manual testing? I need to trigger the deployment only after fixing all the errors.

Liddie

Answer 1

Requiring that manual tests be done before deploying a build prevents continuous deployment. This is the best you can do:

• Automate your deployment so that anyone who is authorized to can deploy either by running a script (if it's easy for everyone who needs to deploy to get the script onto their machines and run it) or by pushing a button on a web page.
• At the end of a successful CI build, notify the manual testing team that a new green build is ready.
• When the manual testing team is ready to begin testing a new build, they deploy that build to their QA server.
• When the manual testing team determines that a build has passed all the tests, they deploy that build to production.

If you want continuous deployment, you'll have to take manual tests out of the path to deployment:

• Automate enough tests so that you're confident that they'll fail if there is a bug that you would not want to reach production.
• At the end of a successful CI build,
  • Deploy that build to production
  • Notify the manual testing team that a new green build has been deployed.
• When the manual testing team is ready to begin testing a new build, they deploy that build to their QA server.
• When the manual testing team determines that a build has failed a test, they work with development to decide whether to roll back the production deployment or to implement and deploy a fix.

Farny