Overview
Traditionally, testing happened at the end of the development process. Shifting left means involving testers earlier and running automated tests (unit, static analysis, etc.) as soon as code is written. This helps find and fix bugs when they are cheapest and easiest to resolve.
Key Practices
- TDD/BDD: Writing tests before or alongside code.
- Static Analysis: Checking code quality on every commit.
- Early Feedback: Providing developers with test results within minutes.
Benefits
- Lower Costs: Fixing a bug in development is much cheaper than fixing it in production.
- Higher Quality: More thorough testing throughout the process.
- Faster Delivery: Reduces the 'testing bottleneck' at the end of a release.