Testing trends for 2018
Recent years have brought in a lot of innovations. Technologies have moved so far forward, and the progress is seen with the naked eye. All these recent alterations will definitely impact the sphere of software development.
And as always, business will want the high-quality product launched as early as possible. In today’s blog post we share the prominent QA trends for 2018 to help shape future plans related to the assurance of the software impeccable quality.
#1. Increasing role of DevOps and Agile
DevOps provides for close collaboration between development team and operations staff throughout all the stages of final product creation. According to the World Quality Report 2017-2018, about 88% of the companies used the DevOps principles in 2017, which is an obvious majority. DevOps and Agile together give you the smooth and fast development process and minimize the time and money spent on the product.
‘Applying DevOps and Agile will give you and your clients in the long run such benefits as acceleration of time to market and outage reduction, increase of quality and faster reaction to changes and defects.
Moreover, today SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) as an Agile for large teams is becoming more and more widespread. If we talk about our own experience at a1qa, we see that clients want to have QA engineers who are able to provide both manual and automated testing – cross-functional QA specialists, so to say.
That’s convenient for both QA vendors and their clients. The former benefit from having one person who can perform multiple tasks and grow as a professional in various testing areas. As for the clients, they don’t need to spend additional time on knowledge transfer and communication’, says Vitaly Prus, Head of Agile Testing Department at a1qa.
#2. Ongoing trend on test automation
‘Test automation is a great method to shorten software lifecycle. Every client is eager to have time to market accelerated and cut the costs of the whole process.
However, automation should be applied wisely. If it’s an end in itself, there is no reason to use it. For example, fast changes in the product will make the automation process unnecessary and unreasonable. If the customer wants to automate testing process, it’s always worth estimating its practicability and figure out whether there is even a slight possibility of negative earnings’, Maxim Chernyak, Head of a1qa Test Automation & Performance Lab, talks about the trend.
However, test automation is under-exploited now as only parts of the QA process are automated. According to the World Quality Report 2017-2018, the average level of automation is about 16%.
#3. Open source tools
Today a big portion of IT companies accept the use of open source tools for testing process, which are easy to apply. Moreover, they are technology-savvy and offer great testing opportunities. You will definitely benefit from these solutions, as the expenses for your services will include only the costs for the actual work of your QA team.
#4. Security testing
Security today is of crucial importance for any product or system. Given the fact of the increased popularity of the IoT technologies, security testing became an inalienable part of the product development. Security and penetration testing services are worth using as hackers will continue seeking access to the IoT devices for destructive purposes.
a1qa pays a lot of attention to the security testing to assure that the protection of personal data must be implemented on the highest possible level.
‘IoT devices security is a pain in the neck for the developers of smart devices in 2018. It is reinforced by hackers’ interest in routers, cameras and other smart devices available through the Internet. Several botnets, which were used for DDoS attacks on various corporations, appeared in 2017. In addition, there is a trend for complicating and sophistication of the attack. Thus, the first versions of botnets simply gathered in password and usernames, however now they are able to compromise the device without knowing the username and password‘, Alexey Abramovich, Head of a1qa Security Testing Department, comments on the trend.
#5. Big Data testing
The expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) deals a lot with big data as laptops, home devices, various sensors and machines generating huge amount of data on a daily basis. IoT evolution, as well as digital revolution in general, plays a great role in Big Data world.
The Big Data testing will be in great demand in the near future. It seems that big data system testing will be easier as machine-learning models are becoming more sophisticated and are able to cope with great deal of data variety.
#6. Mobile testing
The number of smartphone users is increasing every year and it is expected to surpass the 5 billion mark by 2019, which will increase the mobile development and testing.
People tend to use their mobile devices for the activities they used to perform on their PCs. Considering the variety of services trusted to smartphones, customer experience and apps functionality become the most important things to check before the final release of the product.
‘As a number of mobile devices grow constantly, the number of mobile applications grow exponentially. Mobile applications are not only an additional customer acquisition channel, but they are becoming the leaders for this goal. What concerns the trends they are determined by the new technologies and innovations. For example, mobile games still stay popular, but AR technology will definitely increase the number of mobile games on the market in the near future. Apple, Facebook, Google use this technology not only in GameDev sphere – its use is much wider.
Another incontestable trend is blockchain technology which was a great deal of discussion in 2017. This technology became in high demand as it provides new opportunities and growth for businesses. However we should not forget about the other popular technologies, such as IoT, Cloud Based applications and E-commerce, which are still edgy’, Pavel Novik, Head of a1qa Mobile and System Application Testing Department, shares his thoughts.
#7. Performance testing vs. performance engineering
Today, we are moving from Performance Testing to Performance Engineering.
To amplify the chances for a successful release of the app on the market, user experience and performance issues must become the most significant things to consider throughout the entire development process.
‘DevOps and Agile practices couldn’t but influence the QA involvement. More and more often, the QA performance team collaborates with the development team, the functional testing team, and the business stakeholders. This gives an opportunity to move from simple performance tests to a deeper understanding of the way how all parts of the system work together. The use of true-and-tried practices and techniques during each phase of software development lifecycle enables the performance team to improve the software speed and robustness, ensure optimum performance given the business goal, which is the main objective of Performance Engineering‘, says Mihail Urbanovich, a1qa Performance Testing Manager.
We hope this brought together trends will help you make up smart plans in assuring high quality of your products.
