testingoften

Testingoften is a neologism used in software development to describe a practice of incorporating testing frequently throughout the software lifecycle. The term blends testing with often, signaling a philosophy that quality assurance should occur as a routine activity rather than only at major milestones. While not a formal standard, testingoften appears in industry discussions and blogs as a concise way to describe frequent, automated testing within modern delivery pipelines.

Origin and usage: The exact origin is uncertain; the term has appeared in online discussions and practitioner guides since the 2010s. It is commonly invoked in teams adopting agile, DevOps, or continuous delivery models, where fast feedback loops are prioritized.

Practice: Implementations of testingoften typically involve strong test automation, integrated into continuous integration and, where possible, continuous deployment. Teams aim to run wide coverage tests—unit, integration, regression, and end-to-end—on every commit or pull request, with selective nightly or weekly runs for broader scenarios. Test data management and flaky tests are often addressed as part of the approach.

Benefits and challenges: Advocates argue that frequent testing reduces defect leakage, shortens recovery time, and increases confidence during releases. Challenges include maintaining large test suites, preventing flaky tests, and allocating sufficient automation and infrastructure resources.

Relation to other concepts: Testingoften aligns with continuous testing, shift-left testing, and test automation, and complements practices such as test-driven development and behavior-driven development. See also: continuous integration, continuous delivery.