The emerging trends in Software Testing and Quality Assurance

Software testing and Quality Assurance practices are on the ride to continuous evolution, improvement, and inclusion. Rather than being a separate function, QA is all set to become implicit to the development itself. For many software development teams, the process of making QA a part of the software development has already begun. This transition in the perception regarding QA from being a choice to a necessity is one of the most significant milestones that the IT sector has achieved in the evolutionary process.  

Gartner, in the ‘Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2021’ report, has emphasized the need for people centricity and having a total experience strategy. The analyst defines total experience as –  

“Total experience combines traditionally siloed disciplines like multiexperience (MX), customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), and user experience (UX), and links them to create a better overall experience for all the parties. Not only does this streamline the experience of everyone, because organizations are optimizing across all experiences, it offers an excellent opportunity to differentiate an organization from competitors. With an overall goal of transforming the entire experience enables organizations to lean into the challenges created by COVID-19 and identify new activities that they can integrate and build on.” 

If we look at this trend from the perspective of software testing and quality assurance, the necessity to optimize the function and make it more inclusive within each software development lifecycle becomes clearer. Having a streamlined QA function eliminates the bottlenecks that may hinder timely code releases into production, resulting in a better satisfaction ratio among the intra-organizational teams. A high-quality code release translates into fewer defects into production and improved end user experience. An increased customer satisfaction level offers increased ROI to the organization. Therefore, from a business standpoint, user standpoint, as well as the development standpoint, the quality assurance and software testing practice needs to be at the core of an organizational strategy. 

Considering the reduced friction related to QA and improved awareness regarding its benefits, let us look at the emerging trends that will shape the function in the coming year and beyond.

1. Scriptless Test Automation 

Test automation has been one of the top software testing trends for past few years. With a wider acceptance of test automation within the SDLC, there also comes the realization for constantly optimizing it for fulfilling the evolving requirements. One of the major challenges that organizations have been facing in adopting test automation has been the lack of skilled test automation resources for test script maintenance. Scriptless test automation is enabling organizations to overcome this challenge and still have efficient test cases for automating software testing. 

Also read: 6 benefits of shifting to scriptless test automation 

Scriptless test automation is a flexible test automation framework that significantly reduces the amount of manual intervention required in developing and maintaining test cases. Manual testers can simply indicate the steps instead of writing the actual code. A scriptless test automation framework is capable of converting those steps into the actual test cases in such a way that they are reusable and therefore, easy to maintain. 

      2. The marriage of AI, ML, and QA 

Introducing AI and ML into Quality Assurance process allows an organization to get out of the ‘Test Automation trap’, which can be explained as – “Test automation trap is when the test teams are not getting enough time to be able to do the failure triage from the previous test run before building the next test automation code.” 

Also read: The role of Artificial Intelligence in Quality Assurance 

In traditional software testing, by the time the testers complete a test code, the requirements start changing and the application start evolving with respect to the business functionality and UI. This is where AI can barge in and save the day for software testing. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can help prioritize the test cases as well as automate the maintenance of test automation code. In the coming years, the duo will be playing an integral role in analyzing the test results, and further prioritizing the test cases based on the data obtained. 

       3. Continuous integration for continuous quality 

With the help of DevOps, about 59% of organizations are now deploying multiple times a day, once a day, or once every few days. For these organizations, the code quality has been one of the biggest benefits of embracing DevOps.  

The CI/CD pipeline combined with test automation has done wonders for organization in terms of the quality of their releases. Not only has it positioned QA as an imperative instead of a bottleneck, it has resulted in higher returns as well. At present, only a handful of organizations have deployed bots to review their code, but this number is expected to go up as we move further into the future. 

Quality should always be on top of the priority list 

High quality and high user satisfaction go hand in hand. To integrate the total experience strategy into your organization’s growth plan, Quality Assurance and Software Testing need to become ubiquitous. 

Cigniti offers independent quality engineering and a wide range of software testing services and solutions for the next generation enterprises and ISVs across the globe. Our experienced and deep-skilled quality assurance professionals have a hands-on, end-to-end understanding of the challenges faced by enterprises while on the path of digital transformation. 

We implement the best possible software testing methodologies and applications, a Testing Center of Excellence, and world-class software testing Labs to deliver on our promise of Quality Engineering, Quality Assurance, and Digital Assurance. 

Whether you have desktop, mobile or next-gen-based applications, our software testing specialists work with a focused approach to help you get more out of your testing efforts and improve time to market, and thus, your ROI. 

Let’s have a discussion regarding your QA needs and how we can help fulfill them.