Automated Web Application Testing Strategies in a DevOps Pipeline

So there I was, 2 AM on a Tuesday, frantically SSH-ing into production servers because our latest “quick fix” had somehow managed to crash the entire payment system. Again. My manager wasn’t thrilled. Our customers definitely weren’t thrilled. And I was starting to question my life choices.
That was three years ago, back when I thought automated testing was just something other people did – you know, the “boring” developers who didn’t ship features fast enough. Man, was I an idiot.
Fast forward to today, and I haven’t had a middle-of-the-night production emergency in over eight months. The secret? I finally learned how to do automated testing well within a DevOps context. And no, it was not as painful as I expected.