While many companies are already using OpenAPI specs to realize their API-first goals, a growing number of companies are using OpenAPI specs to generate contract tests both early and often. This highly efficient parallelism is making it much easier for teams to practice test-driven development (TTD) and deliver new or updated APIs with confidence that they satisfy the contract. This approach also maintains confidence when handing off APIs and tests to other departments and teams, which can simply reuse the OpenAPI-driven tests as starting points for powerful functional tests that drive quality at speed.
Ultimately, companies are able to ensure test reusability and better handoffs throughout the SDLC by committing to a single "API truth" starting with OpenAPI-driven contract tests. With this efficient approach to test-driven development, managers can eliminate many test bottlenecks while ensuring proper test coverage and detailed error reporting across all teams. Fewer bugs will reach production, and debugging becomes much faster with the ability to pinpoint diagnosis and repair.
Jason Davis, Vice President of Product at Sauce Labs, gives this talk with years of experience in seeing organizations take different paths from monolith to microservices–only to end up too often in the same place: unable to scale test automation to properly manage risk. Too many companies on their journeys to microservices are not ready to transform their quality engineering processes to handle the exponential test case complexity that arises from the countless ways that APIs interact among microservices. Jason will share what he's seen work well for companies that dared to think of OpenAPI specs in terms of quality–scaling test automation and increasing visibility into historic quality trends across the SDLC.
