January is often a time for fresh starts and new strategies for software teams across industries. But is there much new to think about in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) this month?
Shifting left (testing earlier in the SDLC) has been adopted as a “should do” or best practice for a while now so it hardly constitutes a trend. Are those who test in production contrarian or just pressed for time? It was a topic that dominated conversation in the Sauce Labs’ latest podcast episode of Test Case Scenario.
“If anything, I feel like I'm seeing a whole lot more shift right and testing in production as an emerging trend,” says Jason Baum, Sr. Director of Developer Relations at Sauce Labs. “No one argues about shifting left as a best practice and theory. But if we are looking at trends for 2025, I think testing in production seems to be much more trendy at the moment.”
Marcus Merrell, Principal Technical Advisor at Sauce Labs, says whether or not you're shifting left is kind of dependent on where your starting point is. “When you say shift left with no context, what I think of is pulling functional and integration testing earlier into the process,” says Merrell. “Let's have developers write unit tests, integration tests, and Playwright tests – which are a little easier to craft sometimes than Selenium tests, run faster, and happen in the pipeline. In that case, yes this is absolutely a trend that I am seeing that has been going on for a long time.”
One of Merrell’s primary responsibilities at Sauce Labs, as his title implies, is to talk to and advise customers on their software testing strategies. He says customers admit to not unit testing, but since things rarely break, they figure they don't need to. Other teams may not just be crossing their fingers after they push to production.
“I think it's more acknowledging that there is a use case where shifting right makes sense and is good so that you have this complete full right, the continuous testing loop, if you will,” says Baum.
Baum and Merrell see security and accessibility as trending back to shift left in 2025. Those were traditionally starting much later in the SDLC process but are moving back to QA and development.
Left or right in 2025?
Context and industry also matters a great deal whether you are leaning left or right. Large banks have lots of things required to happen in order to ship a new feature or software version so software releases tend to be less often. Financial services need to be extra careful with what they put out there because actual money is moving around.
On the other hand, retailers are often shipping features multiple times a day, hour, or even minute.
“There's kind of only so much you can do in some cases,” says Merrell. “I remember hearing an E-Commerce customer saying that if they see a traffic dip right after a release or there is a problem, they just roll it back. That is shift right on the razor's edge, but I do think that that is not an unreasonable way of testing. If any given change that you put out isn't going to shatter the earth if it goes haywire.”
Evelyn Coleman, CSM at Salto, former Sauce Labs solutions architect, and host of Test Case Scenario, says that if you have high enough traffic and a stable consumer base shifting right testing is a completely reasonable strategy. “Think about a gaming company,” says Coleman. “You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people testing your game for you. If you see people are suddenly leaving your game and going to Reddit to complain about your game, you should probably roll back that last batch of tests.”
Perhaps the early adopters are the ones that could afford to try shifting left. And those same people who could afford to try shifting left are going to be the same people who can afford to try testing in production, and everybody else is just trying to keep up. “I'm now convincing myself that if you're not shifting right when you could, you're probably being irresponsible, even though it is this crazy way of testing that's, you know, so frowned upon by so many folks," says Merrell.
“But if you could test that way just by watching users and letting users be your testers, to me, it seems like a very responsible thing to do. You just have to understand the risk.”
Takeaways
As we look ahead to 2025, the conversation surrounding shifting left and shifting right in the software development lifecycle is more nuanced than ever. While shifting left remains a foundational best practice, the rising trend of testing in production—highlights a significant evolution in how teams approach quality assurance. The context of each organization plays a crucial role in determining the optimal strategy, with factors like industry, release frequency, and risk tolerance shaping their testing methodologies.
To hear all the other nuanced details as well as other trends, listen to the full episode of Test Case Scenario. If you'd like to start building out your own testing strategy for 2025, give Creating a Testing Automation Strategy a read.
