Hi everyone 
Nice to be part of the community here.
Lately, I’ve been spending more time thinking about where most real software issues actually come from. In many systems, individual features work fine on their own, but problems start appearing once different services, modules, or APIs begin talking to each other. These issues are often subtle and easy to miss until they affect real users.
That’s why integration testing plays such an important role. Instead of focusing on isolated components, it validates how different parts of a system behave together. This includes data flowing between services, API contracts staying consistent, and dependencies responding as expected under real conditions.
One challenge teams often face is that integration points change frequently. APIs evolve, configurations shift, and external services introduce breaking changes. Without proper integration coverage, these changes can silently break functionality and only surface much later during staging or production testing.
I recently read a guide that explains integration testing in a very practical way, including common failure patterns and how to structure tests so they remain useful over time. It helped reinforce the idea that strong integration testing reduces surprises, improves release confidence, and makes higher-level testing far more predictable.
Curious how others here approach this.
Do you run integration tests locally, in CI pipelines, or only in shared environments?
Looking forward to hearing different perspectives and learning from your experiences.
Nice to be part of the community here.
Lately, I’ve been spending more time thinking about where most real software issues actually come from. In many systems, individual features work fine on their own, but problems start appearing once different services, modules, or APIs begin talking to each other. These issues are often subtle and easy to miss until they affect real users.
That’s why integration testing plays such an important role. Instead of focusing on isolated components, it validates how different parts of a system behave together. This includes data flowing between services, API contracts staying consistent, and dependencies responding as expected under real conditions.
One challenge teams often face is that integration points change frequently. APIs evolve, configurations shift, and external services introduce breaking changes. Without proper integration coverage, these changes can silently break functionality and only surface much later during staging or production testing.
I recently read a guide that explains integration testing in a very practical way, including common failure patterns and how to structure tests so they remain useful over time. It helped reinforce the idea that strong integration testing reduces surprises, improves release confidence, and makes higher-level testing far more predictable.
Curious how others here approach this.
Do you run integration tests locally, in CI pipelines, or only in shared environments?
Looking forward to hearing different perspectives and learning from your experiences.