How do you test failures and recovery across the whole pipeline?

How do you test failures and recovery across the whole pipeline?

Recovery testing asks what happens when a workflow stops between steps. The most revealing failures often occur after one system succeeds but before another records that success.

Choose boundary failures

Test a provider timeout, worker interruption, failed object upload, and database failure during finalization. Include a response lost after a job was accepted. Confirm which artifacts remain valid and whether the application can reconcile the uncertain outcome.

Verify the user experience

The portal should show the actual known state, preserve useful input, and offer the right next action. A retry should not duplicate publication or create conflicting canonical results. Check that an old attempt cannot overwrite a newer revision. Record the expected recovery for each scenario before running it, then compare observed behavior. This turns error handling into demonstrated product behavior rather than an untested catch block.