Test Impact Analysis (TIA) is a modern way of speeding up the test automation phase of a build. It works by analyzing the call-graph of the source code to work out which tests should be run after a change to production code. Microsoft has done some extensive work on this approach, but it’s also possible for development teams to implement something useful quite cheaply.
One curse of modern software development is having “too many” tests to run all of them prior to check-in. When that becomes true, developers use a costly coping strategy of not running any tests on their local developer workstation. Instead they rely on tests running later on an integration server. And quite often even those fall into disrepair, which is inevitable when shift right becomes normal for a dev team.
Of course, everything that you test pre-integrate should immediately be tested post-integrate in the Continuous Integration (CI) infrastructure. Even the highest functioning development teams might experience breakages born from timing alone for commits landing in real time.
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