Microservices are in, monoliths are out & everyone should switch to automated testing for CI/CD deployment

Software design can be a lot like fashion. One day you’re in, and the next, you’re out. To make things even more difficult, modern software development can be like shouting into the void. You never really know if that product you spent so much time on was worth it. So, how can developers make sure they don’t mix pink and red? Or worse, choose a monolith over microservices?!

Atlassian is here to help! Recently, they surveyed 500 IT and software professionals about the state of their field. What they found was a fascinating look at modern software development.

Microservices are the new monolith

Okay, this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, but monoliths are officially on their way out. Monoliths make everything more difficult, from continuous delivery to just debugging errors. It’s no big surprise why the movement to microservices was so fast.

Microservices make everything easier. Source: Atlassian.

Atlassian found that 71% of developers that use microservices say that it’s easier to both test and deploy new features. Microservices make it possible for smaller teams to move their features from theory into practice independently.

“People are moving over to using microservices for their new applications – they can develop specific components that do jobs really well, and they can scale those jobs up quickly if they are successful,” said Patrick McFaddin.

SEE ALSO: 3 experts predict what’s coming in 2019: Microservices, serverless, and more

Automation is crucial for CI/CD

Manual testing is so 2018. Do employers really expect their developers to manually go through code like some kind of computer peasant? We have automated testing for that now.

Speed is of the essence for any successful development team. Manual testing is slow and laborious. It drags the whole build/development pipeline down. Atlassian found that 62% of teams were bogged down by manual testing issues like insufficient test coverage, additional processes, and a lack of pipeline automation.

CI/CD is better for your delivery cycle. Source: Atlassian.

With continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), teams can release better quality software more often without running into these kinds of delays. Almost half of the teams surveyed found that they could ship changes and received customer feedback faster with CI/CD. More than half found they had less bugs or outages with CI/CD solutions.

This is a drum we’ve been banging on for a while; here’s what Chris Lample said a while back when we spoke to him before W-JAX:

Automated testing allows you to scale your testing in ways not possible with manual testing. After you’ve invested resources in automating test cases, you can run them more frequently and on multiple devices with little additional effort. Scaling your testing with automated testing is a great way to ensure that your app is bug-free.

Forget productivity measurements; focus on customer satisfaction

Sure, we’ve all been groomed to care about our numbers and metrics. But having the TPS reports done on time matters a lot less than making sure the end user is pleased with the product.

As Atlassian points out, outcome-driven development moves away from how fast something is delivered and focuses on the values it creates for the customer. It’s inherently more agile, with an emphasis on tools that provide real-time build and deployment information, data and analytics around customer adoption, and built-in feature flagging.

SEE ALSO: How to save your microservices project from a macro fail

Trends to watch out for

So, to summarize, Atlassian recommends that development teams focus more on improving customer satisfaction. Whether that’s adopting a CI/CD approach or dumping a monolith, the main goal here is to improve the value for the end user.

Check out Atlassian’s infographic for all of their results. Have we missed out on some big developing trend? Let us know in the comments below!

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