Modern clients want a frictionless software experience on their terms and through their preferred channels in this fast-changing world. To fulfill these rising expectations, businesses must constantly adapt, develop, and create competitive customer-centric solutions. Many worldwide firms have recognized the importance of software testing and quality assurance (QA) and have begun to incorporate it into the early stages of the software development life cycle. Early adoption is the simplest and most cost-effective strategy to ensure faster software release cycles, shorter time-to-market, and high-quality software products.
The significance of Quality Assurance (QA) measures in the current digital sector cannot be overstated. QA has been a vital element of the successful development cycle since the early days of the business, walking hand in hand with software development. However, the relevance of software testing has grown in recent years beyond simple product performance reviews and issue repair. Modern trends are transforming the digital sector and QA, transforming this process into a universal instrument for providing quality to clients. Let’s take a look at some of the QA and software testing trends to look out for in 2022 and beyond.
When it comes to current trends, one cannot deny that software has become the primary factor that contributes to the importance of quality assurance. The truth is that software is growing increasingly sophisticated on a daily basis. Technological advancements and the widespread application of machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and big data technologies have transformed traditional programs into complicated instruments that necessitate full-scale and continuous testing. This is one of the primary reasons why quality assurance is essential.
In addition to increasing software complexity, development costs are rising. In such a case, it is clear that releasing a badly tested product to the market will cost far more than numerous rounds of full-cycle testing. This tendency is part of a broader goal by firms to reduce costs as much as feasible. As a result, organizations are increasingly preferring to spend more money on full-scale quality assurance rather than pay for the risks associated with insufficient testing.
Another element driving the increased relevance of software testing is security. The subject of cybersecurity has long gone beyond discussions among a small group of system administrators. Today, cybersecurity issues are being debated at the highest levels. In the context of global digitalization, as most traditional services migrate to the digital realm, the security of such tools and services, as well as the proper storage of user data, becomes critical. To detect and reduce potential security concerns, businesses are increasingly relying on large-scale security testing, which checks software for preparedness to satisfy all modern criteria. Again, the costs of such testing are insignificant in comparison to the losses sustained by a company in the event of a data leak or large breaches in the security system.
Finally, rising business competitiveness and pressure on digital enterprises compel product owners to invest greater resources in software testing. In today’s article, we want to explore current trends in software testing in order to forecast the quality assurance industry’s near future.
Software testing, as an inherent element of the development process, must be incorporated in all techniques used by modern enterprises in the process of digital transformation. First and foremost, we are discussing Agile and DevOps methodologies, which are gaining traction and necessitate continuous delivery of services and software, with continuous testing as a major component.
The essence of DevOps implementation is combining the best of development, operations, and testing to maximize value and ROI. On the testing front, the QAOps strategy is gaining traction as it increases interaction between software engineers and development teams in order to deliver tests in a continuous integration and continuous development pipeline.
With the technology industry developing at rapid speed, the volume of information continues to expand, making security testing a key issue for firms concerned with data flow and avoiding leaks, coding flaws, and holes. Overall, early implementation of security testing shows to be cost-effective in virtually all circumstances. According to a survey titled ‘Better Security And Business Outcomes With Security Performance Management’ 82 % of stakeholders agreed that the way their customers and partners view security is becoming increasingly essential in how their organizations make decisions. This alone demonstrates how cybersecurity and compliance have risen to the top of priority lists. There isn’t a single reason to disregard this soon-to-be-standard trend – and here are a few of them:
Penetration testing saves a pretty penny — Data breaches exacerbate the already precarious position in which businesses find themselves in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.
Security testing allows you to identify your company’s weak points before the bad guys do.
Cybersecurity testing makes sure that if downtime occurs, it is not as costly and damaging as it would be if you were unprepared.
Security testing helps to identify areas susceptible to cyber threats.
Regular penetration testing helps firms maintain their excellent reputations and builds confidence between them and their clients, partners and third parties.
One of the most important software testing market developments is test automation. According to a GitHub developer poll, more than 30% of firms are implementing test automation in some form or another, with only 12% having fully automated all of their QA processes. Test automation is a vital component of the DevOps process, and software teams cannot disregard it in order to properly apply DevOps techniques.
They must look for ways to replace manual testing with automated testing. Because test automation is regarded as a major bottleneck in DevOps, most regression testing should be automated at a minimum.
Given the popularity of DevOps and the reality that test automation is underutilized, with less than 20% of testing being automated, there is a lot of space for organizations to expand test automation adoption. More improved methodologies and tools should emerge to enable more effective use of test automation in projects.
Popular automation tools like Selenium, Katalon, and TestComplete continue to improve with new capabilities that make automation easier and more effective.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a rapidly evolving technology concept. The Internet of Things will soon accept the 5G standard. It introduces various new gadgets to the market, and the combinations for testing between protocols, devices, platforms, and operating systems are limitless. The demand for performance, security, compatibility, usability, and data integrity testing will increase in the software testing and QA market. Only a small percentage of businesses use Internet of Things testing methodologies. However, this trend is expected to continue in the following decades.
Companies are currently slightly behind the pace, with 41 percent having a suitably mature Internet of Things testing strategy in place, and 30 percent intending to include Internet of Things technology into their products. The same thing is happening with big data. The proliferation of IoT apps has prepared the way for increased varied data volume generation, necessitating the need for big data testing, as seen in large e-commerce corporations such as Amazon. As a result, big data testing has a positive impact on organizations’ ability to evaluate information, make data-driven decisions, and increase market strategizing and targeting.
Another significant factor that is rapidly making big data testing a more regular practice is that data is the new standard for developing marketing strategy. Every year, company processes become more sophisticated, therefore big data testing requirements will not go away in 2022.
One of the most promising new technologies in the software testing business is blockchain tests. The surge in popularity of cryptocurrencies is hardly news, since it has grown really global in scope over the last few years, with consistent endorsement for these payment methods from thought leaders such as Elon Musk and Richard Branson. However, if the very existence of cryptocurrencies as an alternative payment method continues to be a source of anxiety among businesses, then blockchain technology, which enables cryptocurrencies to exist, is unquestionably a promising option. Financial services firms (and others) are concerned about secure data storage, and blockchain-powered solutions are one of the prominent options in this case.
Research figures back up blockchain’s growing popularity. As a result, global spending on the development of blockchain technologies and solutions is expected to reach $11.7 billion by end of 2022. Nonetheless, implementing blockchain technologies is a costly process because decentralized data storage is not a cheap pleasure. There are numerous sophisticated processes involved in recording and storing data in the blockchain, including encryption, decryption, cryptography, and distribution to nodes. In such a setting, the cost of a mistake multiplies multiple times, making early testing of all these processes one of the most recent trends in software testing. Performance Engineering and Exploratory Tests Customer experience carries significant weight because the number of platforms on which each application is available defines the captured market. It becomes the driving force behind rapidly changing requirements, shorter development cycles, and more frequent releases. Based on the foregoing, we can assume that absolute automation, the introduction of cutting-edge technology, and a focus on security will be the dominant trends in software testing in the future. Nonetheless, the beauty and danger of such labor stem from the fact that there is always the possibility of encountering an unexpected, unrecorded, and one-of-a-kind circumstance that your security system cannot handle. Exploratory testing is done to minimise the risks of loss in such scenarios.
At its essence, this technique is as follows: instead of utilizing scripted tests, testers build non-scripted and unspecific procedures and circumstances and run them via software. This enables QA professionals to properly prepare the application for unforeseen scenarios. However, proper Exploratory testing necessitates the usage of an expert who is well-versed in specific software and can utilize it as an advanced user, subjecting it to numerous non-scripted tests.
