And how skipping it could cost your company more than just time

In today’s fast-paced world of Agile software development, automation is not a luxury — it’s a necessity. Teams strive for rapid iterations, continuous feedback, and faster delivery. But there’s a silent bottleneck many still ignore: manual testing.

While DevOps has brought immense progress in infrastructure automation, CI/CD, and deployment, testing often remains the neglected corner of the pipeline — and the consequences can be catastrophic.

Even the most intuitive Agile frameworks can fall apart if testing isn’t automated and integrated deeply into the development cycle. Yes — even babies get annoyed when it’s not! 👶

 

⚠️ A Real-World Glimpse: One Missed Test, One Massive Security Threat

Let’s walk through a simple — but very real — DevOps failure:

  • A developer makes a change in a microservice API.

  • For testing convenience, they temporarily bypass the authorization logic.

  • The change is complete — but the bypassed code is mistakenly committed along with it.

  • DevOps kicks in automatically, the build is deployed…

  • And now, the application is live with authorization completely disabled.

Anyone with access can now see data they’re not supposed to.
It’s not just a mistake. It’s a major security breach.

Now, imagine if a simple automated regression test for authorization had been in place. The mistake would have been caught before deployment, saving the company from risk, embarrassment, and potential legal issues.

Manual testing? It’s highly likely QA would miss this too — especially in complex, layered API environments where changes don’t always surface on the UI.

 

🧪 Why Test Automation Matters More Than Ever

Automation reduces human error, speeds up the release cycle, and ensures repeatability — the three pillars of a successful Agile + DevOps model.

 

As it can be observed in the flow above, a developer made a little change in a micro service API. To Test it faster, he/she blocked the authorization code. After finishing the work, the developer accidentally checked in the blocked authorization along with the required code change. DevOps as per the configuration gets triggered and deploys the code change to the server. Since the new build now has authorization disabled so the application is compromised now and everybody who has access to the system can see the data they are not supposed to see. It’s big security threat! The solution was quite simple, with test automation in the delivery pipeline for regression testing, this issue would be been caught easily and could have been fixed quickly but due to this missing important step, the application became a victim of security threat due to a small silly mistake. The chances of catching the issue with manual QA is also low because QA may test the change and some touching functionalities without noticing that there could be a change in the authorization side as well. It becomes even more difficult in API testing scenario.

It is clear now that test automation should be considered very seriously as a step in the release process pipeline to avoid mistake which are hard to catch with manual execution. The cost of such mistakes are very high in scenarios related to security and performance.

Here’s what you gain by embedding testing automation as a core part of your DevOps strategy:

✅ Early Defect Detection

Catch bugs before they move downstream, when they’re still cheap and easy to fix.

✅ Service/API Testing

Shift-left testing enables teams to validate core services even before UI development begins — a crucial and often-overlooked step.

✅ Security & Performance Validation

Automated tests can uncover authorization loopholes, token mismanagement, or endpoint vulnerabilities that may slip past manual checks.

✅ Confidence in Scaling

As the product grows, regression becomes unmanageable manually. Automation ensures confidence with every build.

✅ Cross-Platform Coverage

Run test suites across multiple browsers and OS combinations at scale, without needing armies of testers.

✅ Speed & Cost Efficiency

Save hours of repetitive QA work and reduce costs associated with manual testing mistakes.

✅ Real-time Alerts & Visibility

DevOps + Automation enables instant test result feedback across globally distributed teams — no more waiting for long test cycles.

With the help of advantages and scenario explained above, it should be quite evident that test automation is an integral part of DevOps pipeline and must be considered as mandatory step to avoid the cost of the damage it could do due to the potential misses.

🧠 Test Automation is a Business Enabler — Not Just a Technical Checkbox

At Emeis Technologies, we view test automation not as an optional enhancement — but as a non-negotiable step in the release pipeline. We integrate automated test suites right from the start, aligned with your CI/CD strategy, ensuring no code change goes unverified.

Skipping test automation is like shipping without brakes.
You might go fast… until you crash.

🧰 Ready to Fortify Your DevOps Pipeline?

Let us help you design and implement an intelligent, scalable test automation framework that integrates seamlessly with your current workflows.

📩 contact@emeistech.com
🌐 www.emeistech.com