Shift left
Shift left means moving a verification activity earlier in the delivery process so problems are found while they are still cheap to fix.
What is shift left?
Shift left means moving a verification activity earlier in the delivery process so problems are found while they are still cheap to fix.
Plain and technical
Instead of testing security or quality at the end, you check it as the code is being written, when changing it costs almost nothing.
Shifting a check earlier only produces value if the resulting feedback is fast, scoped to the change rather than the whole codebase, specific enough to act on, and accurate enough to trust. A check that reports a repository entire backlog on every pull request is ignored within a week, regardless of how early it runs.
What it looks like in practice
Nearby vocabulary
DevSecOps
DevSecOps is the practice of integrating security verification into the software delivery process rather than applying it as a separate review at the end.
Vulnerability management
Vulnerability management is the continuous process of identifying security weaknesses, ranking them by real risk, fixing them and verifying the fix.
Continuous delivery
Continuous delivery is the practice of keeping software in a state where any change that has passed verification could be released to production at any time.
How DevOpsArk handles shift left
More definitions
See these concepts in a running system
A 30-minute walkthrough against your own infrastructure rather than a slide about the theory.