Testing Strategies

Overview

A testing strategy defines what to test, where to test, and how often to run tests for fast and reliable delivery.

Test Pyramid

flowchart TD
    A[End-to-End Tests - Few] --> B[Integration Tests - Some]
    B --> C[Unit Tests - Many]

Practical Strategy

• Unit tests on every commit
• Integration tests on pull request and merge
• End-to-end smoke tests after deployment

Production Example

A payment service pipeline:

stages:
  - unit
  - integration
  - security
  - deploy
  - smoke

This balances quick feedback with deployment confidence.

Common Pitfalls

• Too many brittle end-to-end tests
• Missing contract tests between services
• Treating test coverage percentage as the only quality metric

Key Takeaways

• Good strategies optimize both speed and confidence.
• Most checks should run at unit and integration levels.
• Production-like smoke tests validate deployment safety.