This article demonstrates a methodology to conduct extreme automation (Zero Touch or No Touch) with an embedded QA team, wearing multiple hats, to speed up the entire software development life-cycle. This model has been successfully proven in a POD and can be easily replicated across teams. We first introduce the concept of PODs, which is a distributed and diverse team, working for common goals and each member in the POD plays multiple roles – ex: develop & deploy; SME, QA & triage, etc.
Extreme automation can be achieved by bringing together modern tools, technologies, advanced software development and testing practices, robust processes, and skilled human resources. This concept starts with transforming the mindset of POD members by thinking about automation of the entire SDLC and programmatically automating any repetitive manual effort right from the requirement phase through development, QA, deployment, and post-production maintenance. The POD requires a team of highly skilled and motivated human resources, who are hungry to learn, experiment, improvise and innovate. Since modern engineering principles involve multiple and evolving technologies, automating the Wycliffe is tool agnostic. Rather, it involves multiple tools and technologies, preferably open source, which is skillfully engineered and integrated to test complex code and functionality, without human touch or intervention.