Shift-Left & Shift-Right — test earlier and later
Shift-left means finding defects before code is written. Shift-right means validating in production.
This track covers both ends of the spectrum — from requirements review and Three Amigos sessions that surface defects in planning, through to feature flags, canary deployments, and synthetic monitoring that validate behaviour after go-live. Senior testers and test leads who own quality across the whole pipeline will find both essential.
From requirements to production
Shift-Left Testing
Finding defects in requirements before development starts. Three Amigos sessions, acceptance criteria authoring, and ATDD — the cheapest bugs are the ones you catch in planning.
~30 min read · ~65 min with exercises · Shift-Left & Shift-Right
Lesson 2Shift-Right Testing
Feature flags, canary deployments, A/B testing, and synthetic monitoring. Validating behaviour in production with real traffic, safely.
~30 min read · ~65 min with exercises · Shift-Left & Shift-Right
Lesson 3Continuous Testing
Embedding quality gates in CI/CD pipelines. DORA metrics, automated quality gates, and the feedback loops that make continuous delivery safe.
~30 min read · ~65 min with exercises · Shift-Left & Shift-Right
Testing lives at both ends of the pipeline
Most testers are trained to work in the middle — the test phase between requirements and release. Shift-left pushes QA earlier, into requirements and design, where defects cost a fraction of what they cost when found in SIT. Shift-right pushes QA later, into production validation, where real traffic and real user behaviour reveal what controlled test environments cannot.
Together they create a quality posture that covers the whole pipeline. You are not waiting for code to appear in your test environment before you add value. And you are not treating production go-live as the end of quality work.
Both skills are increasingly expected of senior testers and test leads on NZ technology programmes, particularly as organisations move to continuous delivery models. This track teaches them from first principles with NZ examples throughout.
Other specialised tracks
DevOps QA
CI/CD pipelines, container testing, and infrastructure as code — the technical layer that continuous testing runs on.
SpecialisedBDD & Three Amigos
Behaviour-Driven Development in depth — the full Gherkin workflow that shift-left depends on.
SpecialisedEnvironment & Release Management
The environment discipline that makes shift-right safe — gates, data, and promotion policies.