Testing in ProductionWhy should you do it?

Outline

• What testing in production is not

• Why should you do it

• How should you do it

Disclaimer

@nailor

Testing in Production

What it is not?

It’s not a way to make you care less

It’s not the replacement for all the testing

It’s not the end of the world.

Why should you do it?

Let’s have a short quiz

Staging environment?

Problem free staging environment?

ProductionStaging environment on steroids

The environment

The data

The users

How to test in production?

(Like steroids, it comes with downsides)

You want to limit the blast radius

Limiter #1: Feature flags

[ ] Feature A

[x] Feature B

Add broken code behind the flag

Staged roll-outs

Easy to support

Limiter #2: Dark load

One request Two execution paths

One response

Real usereal problems

Trickier to implement

Limiter #3:Easy rollback

Knowing that breaking things is not fatal is the

key

How?

Checklists

What do you gain?

Confidence in your code

A / B testing

Verifiability of ideas

Speed

Go and test in production!

(Author takes no responsibility for anything)

Thank you!jyrki@spotify.com / @nailor