Running tests to validate changes to the code is key to maintaining quality. For continuous integration practice to be successful, it is essential you have a good test suite that is run with every build. However, as the code base grows, the regression test suite tends to grow as well, and running a full regression test can take a long time. Sometimes, tests themselves may be long-running – this is typically the case if you write end-to-end tests. This reduces the speed with which customer value can be delivered, as pipelines cannot process builds quickly enough.
Being able to divide the test execution on multiple cores across a pool of agents can significantly reduce the time it takes to complete the test execution. While most build servers are multi-core, the agent orchestrating the pipelines doesn't always...