The future of software testing: top 4 impactful trends that will dominate in 2023
Emerging technologies help organizations worldwide to digitize and progress faster, drive operational efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and strengthen their brand identity ― all to meet desired business outcomes.
Take, for instance, the metaverse. This technology provides better opportunities for businesses to interact with users from anywhere in the world, conduct meetings or educational sessions with colleagues, and design impressive recreational areas to play games. No wonder its global market revenue will increase by 14 times and comprise almost $680 billion!
Or another example ― is genomics. It can assess human DNA and its structure to detect hidden health diseases or possible disorders in the future. Its great potential is demonstrated by the growing worldwide market size that will reach almost $6 billion in 2028.
However, the implementation and usage of advanced technologies often complicate digitization journeys because of their overall sophisticated nature. To simplify that, organizations may, among other things, rely on their thorough testing, which also helps prevent issues in the production environment, accelerate time to market, and optimize QA budgets.
How to attain maximum efficiency during this process? We suggest improving the testing workflows with the top 4 industry trends described in the article:
- Ensure sustainable quality engineering to minimize environmental harm
- Set up an automated-first approach to reach desired outcomes faster
- Consider a quality engineering strategy to support emerging technologies
- Adopt Agile and DevOps to improve the development process
Trend 1. Ensure sustainable quality engineering to minimize environmental harm
Open-minded companies tend to shift testing left to detect issues early in the SDLC, speed up testing cycles, lower costs, and improve cybersecurity. However, there is another significant benefit of focusing on software quality ― attaining sustainability. The more companies emphasize software soundness, the better they can operate without harming the environment.
The World Quality Report 2022-23 (WQR), which surveyed 1,750 IT executives across diverse regions and sectors, mentions that when sticking to sustainable quality engineering, organizations can enhance brand value (47% of respondents), increase overall revenue (46%), and even better employee recruitment and retention indicators (33%). Most importantly, executives think that sustainable IT will positively impact social and economic aspects, e.g., energy efficiency.
Source: World Quality Report 2022-23
Unfortunately, only in half of the cases do companies succeed in reaching set sustainability targets during software development. They already make a difference by relying on the cloud, test optimization, test automation, verifying customer journeys, performance, and CX.
In addition to these measures, they can prioritize a quality assurance process, initiate it at the earliest development stages, quantify environmental influence by configuring software performance monitoring solutions, and consider sustainability from the design stage.
Trend 2. Set up an automated-first approach to reach desired outcomes faster
Test automation remains an indispensable part of continuous testing and Agile-driven workflows and contributes to speeding up testing cycles, decreasing costs, and improving testing coverage.
Nevertheless, it’s difficult for the WQR interviewees to obtain the expected test automation benefits ― only 55.1% set up continuous integration and delivery, 53.4% managed to scale down QA team size, and 53.4% boosted test coverage.
When it comes to implementing automated workflows, quite often, organizations confront two major obstacles ― poor planning and its separation from the development process.
To improve the situation and optimize QA efforts, companies can focus on:
- Adopting test automation already at the requirements creation phase
- Designing an accurate implementation plan
- Analyzing tooling efficiency
- Betting on highly skilled SDETs
- Creating a long-lasting product development strategy.
Trend 3. Consider a quality engineering strategy to support emerging technologies
The latest technological innovations arising at a rapid pace help businesses simplify daily operations, deliver digital transformations of diverse sizes, scale on demand, enhance both customer and employee experience, and stay successful despite high market competition.
For instance, already today, the cloud helps organizations improve cybersecurity levels, ensure data recovery opportunities, and increase overall flexibility; the internet of things (IoT) contributes to decreasing expenses related to infrastructure and boosting deployment speed; AI/ML optimizes routine processes, forecasts failures, ensures personalized customer experience, and more.
This year, the WQR respondents stated that their current IT strategies rely a lot on such technologies as blockchain and Web 3.0 (85%), digital twins (78%), and the metaverse (69%).
Without a focus on software quality during their implementation, multiple business risks can arise, especially those related to cybersecurity, growth, and staying ahead of the competition.
To cope with them, organizations can:
- Attract seasoned QA experts who have in-demand skills, e.g., automated, cybersecurity testing, AI/ML
- Consider introducing DevSecOps to enable high software resistance to cyberattacks from the early development stages
- Design an effective strategy for smooth adoption.
Trend 4. Adopt Agile and DevOps to improve the development process
Organizations that jumpstart a cultural shift towards Agile and DevOps improve the quality of their delivery, attain faster and more frequent releases, speed up the process of obtaining feedback, and enhance the levels of customer and employee satisfaction.
The journey to embracing agility is complicated and requires the support of experienced QA engineers who possess skills related to test automation and CI/CD toolkits, performance and cybersecurity testing, deep knowledge of the industry, and can become full-fledged members of cross-functional teams. According to the WQR, organizations still lack professional quality engineers who can assist in infusing and developing Agile workflows.
To simplify the transition, companies can embed test automation along with performance, cybersecurity, or integration testing, consider the toolkit in advance, take care of appropriate quality metrics, and continue betting on skilled people.
Closing
Today, companies more often give preference to advanced technologies to improve organizational performance and keep up with increasing market competition. However, their roll-out and further usage are far from being the easiest task.
QA and software testing can simplify it and contribute to accelerating QA activities and reducing expenses. To increase the efficiency of this process, organizations can consider industry QA trends to reach set objectives and ensure that end users are delighted with delivered IT solutions: test automation, Agile workflows, timely quality assurance for advanced technologies, and sustainable quality engineering.
Reach out to a1qa’s experts to ensure high quality of your software solutions.
