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Quality Gates
Quality gates define the pass thresholds, severity limits, and essential test requirements that changes must meet before advancing in your pipeline.
Quality gates are automated checkpoints that make sure work items meet your quality standards before they progress through the pipeline. Rather than relying on manual sign-off, quality gates apply your defined rules to every test run — automatically blocking a work item from advancing if results fall short of your standards.
Quality gates are attached to test suites and enforced at the pipeline stage level. Each stage can have its own quality gate rules, allowing you to apply progressively stricter standards as work items move closer to Production.
How Quality Gates Fit into the Pipeline
When a Test Suite Group Execution completes — whether triggered by a Review Event or a Pre-Promotion Event — quality gates evaluate the results. If all gate criteria are met, the work item is cleared to proceed. If any gate fails, the work item is blocked and the developer receives the details needed to investigate and resolve the issue.
Quality Gate Criteria
DevOps Center Testing evaluates quality gates based on three criteria. You can configure any combination of these when creating a quality gate rule:
| Criteria | How It Works |
|---|---|
| Severity Level Threshold | The gate fails if any test at or above your defined severity level fails. For example, setting the threshold to 1 — Critical blocks the work item if any critical-severity test fails, regardless of overall pass rate. |
| Test Pass Percentage | The gate fails if the overall percentage of passed tests in the suite falls below your defined value. For example, a threshold of 85% means at least 85 out of 100 tests must pass. |
| Essential Test Failures | The gate fails if any test marked as Essential fails — regardless of severity level or overall pass percentage. Use this for high-stakes tests where failure is always a blocker, such as payment processing or security validation logic. |
- Create a Quality Gate Rule
Define a quality gate rule that sets the pass threshold, severity limits, or essential test requirements for a test suite. - Add a Quality Gate to a Test Suite
Attach a quality gate rule to a test suite to enforce pass criteria before work items can be promoted. - Remove a Quality Gate from a Test Suite
Detach a quality gate rule from a test suite to remove the enforcement criteria for that suite.
