Article

2022 software testing trends

Shyam Ramanathan,

Global Delivery Director 

Published: December 7, 2021

The role of quality assurance (QA) in software development continues to evolve with buzzing industry trends. Having gone through a remarkable transition, QA has evolved from performing manual tests to a strategic function and has become a top priority for today’s CIOs. As software testing continues to be a pivotal element leading to successful project and product outcomes, let’s unravel some critical trends of software testing that practitioners should not miss!

What’s new in software testing

Digital transformation

Increased adoption of digital transformation programs like DevOps has pushed organizations to reconsider QA from a digitization perspective. As a result, teams are becoming more cohesive as QA enables speed while maximizing efficiency. But without a robust QA strategy, continuous development and delivery will stall. As a result, DevOps is now merging with QA, leading to a new framework called QAOps. QAOps maintains software quality by approaching it with a DevOps mindset.

Testing center of excellence (TCoE)

The business world is experiencing a surge in establishing testing centers of excellence in response to challenges like shrinking budgets and differing testing delivery models. Other factors like underperforming tests and underutilized resources resulting from disparate test processes across geographies, locations, and teams further raise the need to establish a TCoE. It enables a centralized QA function, consistent processes, detailed metrics spanning projects, and consistent delivery to boost customer satisfaction.

Mobile testing

Mobile testing labs need to be set up with different operating systems. But managing various devices and operating systems remains a challenge. With multiple mobile devices in play, mobile testing expertise is essential to the overall success of the QA function. Moreover, mobile testing is increasingly important to all customers. So, establishing a mobile testing lab to take ownership of managing devices has an edge in the current business landscape.  

Exploratory testing 

Simply put, exploratory testing is the answer to developing quality solutions without automation. Chartering, one of the keys to exploratory testing, is essentially setting a clear mission for the session to be tested. As a tester, the job is to be an investigator and ask questions about the user story and define the scope of the mission. The primary key to exploratory testing is it enables users to bring their creativity into finding new bugs not found through scriptless testing. 

Automation testing 

There is a shift from licensed software tools to open-source tools. Organizations that can show expertise with open-source tools will thrive in the new emerging market. However, before undertaking any automation effort, it is imperative to prove that the selected tool works successfully in a client environment. This develops customer trust for the proposed solution, increases execution speed, reduces cost, and enables faster regression cycles resulting in outstanding quality.

Security testing 

With remote work ruling the roost, security testing has come to the forefront for all organizations, while cloud-based testing has increased concerns around security. Being a specialized skill, having employees and partners with security expertise is critical to establishing a well-rounded testing organization. Typical security requirements include confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, authorization, and nonrepudiation. This specialized skill will be in greater demand moving forward and plays a crucial role in the overall quality and effectiveness of security.

Early defect detection 

Today, IT organizations spend a greater portion of their budget on quality assurance. To ensure that the budget increase is practical, involving the QA team at the beginning of the software development lifecycle is essential. The earlier the defects are detected, the lower the cost of fixing them and the overall cost of quality. The key to shifting left is to measure the effectiveness of a change and determine whether it meets end-user expectations. The other method that helps is to have QA teams write unit test cases for development teams to test.

Software development engineers in test (SDETs)

 A combination of functional and automation testing, SDETs are testers who have coding capability to help organizations win in the future. They also help QA identify defects earlier and improve white-box testing, which is not always done by QA teams. SDETs also increase quality while enabling cost savings through automated solutions.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

In the world of QA, AI is still at a nascent stage, creating a window of new jobs and opportunities for data scientists and AI quality experts. The primary purpose of AI in QA is to ensure that teams optimize and prioritize their time, resources, and opportunities.

Test environments

QA teams need to develop skills that enable them to manage domains independently. That means test environments need to enable QA and development teams to test independently. Organizations are adopting more test environment strategies as nonavailability or incompatibility of the testing environment stalls a testing project. 

Winning the future

It is heartening to note that CIOs increasingly feel QA is here to stay, as investing in QA remains vital to increasing both revenue and customer satisfaction. The trends mentioned above lie at the heart of what QA organizations should focus on for 2022. 

Shyam Ramanathan

Global Delivery Director 

Shyam Ramanathan has been working in the IT world for over 21 years, where he has developed a breadth of knowledge and experience in program management, requirements analysis, requirements review, Use case modelling, project planning, test design, test execution, and establishing global delivery teams across geographies and building Center of Excellence. 

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