The first step in any significant software procurement is to assure there is a clear definition of the business problem being solved. If you don’t know what you want, you aren’t prepared to negotiate for it, so you'll end up with a system or tool that isn't what you need—and you'll likely be disappointed at delivery.

In the world of continuous integration and continuous delivery, the importance of ensuring good performance has increased immensely. While functional and unit testing are relatively easier to integrate into these processes, performance engineering has typically raised more challenges. Here's how you can mitigate them.

The speed of testing depends on a consistent software release process that can provide critical information when reporting issues. QA pros will benefit from a new set of DevOps tooling called application release automation, which drives continuous release deployment and provides visibility about what was deployed.