Shifting left is the concept of incorporating specific practices, which have traditionally been left until late in the process, much earlier in our workflow.
System integration, testing, user experience, and deployment can all profoundly affect the outcome and success of our product; they all validate the product's viability in different ways. If we start thinking about them sooner in our development life cycle and we start to build these strategies as we go, we have a much better chance of success and of avoiding any nasty surprises.
The following diagram shows what we mean by shifting left:
By moving these practices towards ...
