Designing a Four‑Layer Automated Testing Framework for DevOps Efficiency

In recent years, automation testing has grown rapidly across industries, with GUI, APP, cloud, and other domains developing open‑source frameworks to meet specific testing needs, though most focus on implementation technology.

From an automation engineering perspective, an automated testing framework consists of four layers:

First layer – System Under Test / Test Environment: This bottom layer includes the physical devices and virtual environments that are the actual test objects; automation scripts run here.

Second layer – Automation Testing Architecture: The core layer, containing several subsystems.

Third layer – Automation Scripts and Suites: It is recommended to organize scripts by features and test types.

Fourth layer – User Layer: Includes script scheduling, reporting dashboards, and user management systems.

A DevOps automation efficiency platform should include the following layers:

1) Resource Layer: Provides development environment resources, test environment resources, and resources under test, generally offering scheduling and orchestration capabilities.

2) Data Layer: Stores all data in the DevOps system—requirements, code, artifacts, test cases/scripts, defects, and releases—and provides storage, backup, scaling, access control, and audit functions.

3) Capability Assessment Layer: From an organizational perspective, it analyzes metric data collected across the product‑research‑operations workflow, builds an organizational capability baseline, and sets efficiency targets to drive continuous improvement.

4) DevOps Automation Pipeline: The core of the platform, comprising continuous development/integration/testing, continuous release, and continuous operation subsystems.

Continuous Development/Integration subsystem provides requirement‑code linking, static code analysis, build/packaging, and unit testing capabilities.

Continuous Testing subsystem supports requirement‑test case (including scripts) linking, API testing, functional testing, and specialized non‑functional testing.

Continuous Release subsystem enables VM/container deployment.

Continuous Operation subsystem offers elasticity, monitoring, logging/alerting, and upgrade/downgrade capabilities.

5) User Layer: Provides end‑to‑end management of requirements, projects, development processes, defects, releases, and resources.