Software Testing - The Road Ahead

About the Author

Vipin JainDirector QAAstegic Infosoft (https://www.astegic.com)

Twitter: Vipin_QALinkedin: https://in.linkedin.com/in/vipinqaleadSkype: Vipin_jain1974

Speaker• 15th International QA Conference in Bilbao, Spain, 2016• 10th International QA Conference in Madrid, Spain, 2015• 11th International QA Conference in Bilbao, Spain, 2012

Member• Member, Technical committee 2014, 2015 and 2016

Publications• http://www.ministryoftesting.com/2014/11/offering-performance-testing-

cloud-service/• Testing Multilingual websites – Software Testing Club, UK

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7FE5U4AQw0lX3huSmNsaGNndGc

• Taking Testing to Cloud – Testing Circus Magazine http://www.testingcircus.com/testing-circus-2014-march-edition/

Quality is becoming more Mission Critical● Each year, across the globe, an increasing number of organizations are aware of the

direct effect of application quality on achieving customer satisfaction and higher revenue.

● With the growth in Internet of Things (IoT), people today expect seamless connectivity and instant access to information, with low tolerance for inconsistent experience between digital channels.

● Organizations are paying more attention to delivering high quality, reliable user experience. These, and other technology trends, have important impacts on Quality Assurance (QA) and Testing.

Quality is synonymous with customer loyalty and brand identity

●As business services expand to incorporate new technology and methodologies (mobility, cloud, agile, analytics and Big Data) the quality of their products and services has become increasingly important.●Consumers are accustomed to instant and constant connectivity, with a growing appetite for more and more information across multiple devices and platforms.

CLOUD

Social Media

MobileAnalytics

Agile

Big Data

Quality is synonymous with customer loyalty and brand identity● The power of social media can instantly damage brand reputation.

● A bad user experience can dramatically erode consumer loyalty.

● The importance of Quality Assurance and Testing within an organisation is becoming more and more critical to the success or failure of any customer facing business.

What are trends for next 4-5 years?● Manual Testing - Here to Stay

●It is here to stay for the foreseeable future as it retains key testing areas such as exploratory, end-to-end user experience and usability testing

●Automation - Growing by the day●Automation of testing and test scripting remains on the ascent. ●More and more aspects of testing are being automated. Non-functional load,

stress and performance testing are commonplace and on the increase. ●Functional automated testing promises stability, repeatability, consistency and

speed of testing, as well as reducing the workload of manual testers. ●The implementation of automation remains challenging. The need for suitable

tools is still hampering progress and Test automation currently stands at 28% of testing activities, increasing year on year.

What are trends for next 4-5 years?● Cloud based solutions - Growing by the day

●These are on the increase and with this cloud based test environments, as more and more projects and applications adopt this technology.

●There is an expectation that by 2017 almost 50% of testing will be cloud based.

●It is also perceived that the adoption of this technology is reducing overall infrastructure costs. This is being complemented with higher levels of expertise and understanding in the area of test environments and test data management.

●Test automation is also supporting this trend.

●Security and performance testing - Growing by the day●Along with customer experience (end-to-end), these testing are becoming

more and more important within IT projects. The use of new technology incorporating analytics, social media, mobile and Big Data, along with the “always on-line” expectation of users, is forcing these trends ever to the fore.

What are trends for next 4-5 years?● Mobile Testing - Growing by the day

●Social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies are being leveraged more and more with a view to increase operational efficiencies and brand awareness. Yet again this is driving the focus and awareness firmly into the QA and Testing spotlight, with an increased expectation and a demand for “zero tolerance” of defects.

●Consumers expect instantaneous access to data. Almost one third of SMAC projects is embracing mobile or social media, consequentially there is a rise in demand for mobile testing and outsourcing to specialized service providers.

●Crowdsourcing of testing - Growing by the day●54% of organisations use this sector, complementing in-house testing. It offers

the ability to test user scenarios across multiple platforms with a rapid response feedback. This trend can only increase, providing a controlled form of outsourcing that reduces the need for conventional testing across all available devices and platforms. It enables stability, performance and security of an application to be tested rapidly and in a cost-effective manner

What are trends for next 4-5 years?● Network virtualization - Growing by the day

●Network virtualization is being adopted by many IT departments to emulate production-like environments. This helps to minimise errors and issues in data integrity, performance and user experience within the test lab setup. Therefore the DevOps role and its importance is growing within the remit of QA and Testing needs.

● Testing as a whole- Keeps on Growing ●Many companies are apparently still not involving QA/Testing until late within

a projects' lifecycle. However as QA and Testing become more pivotal its function will take centre stage. Involvement will commence at the kickoff of a project, through requirements gathering, development and across every phase of a project. Test management and metrics reporting will become increasingly critical to monitor quality progress and report back to all stakeholders.

The Real Challenges Ahead● Agile Implementation - Biggest Challenge

●78% organizations are using Agile methodologies to develop, test and maintain their applications

●Out of these, 61% of organisations admitting integration problems have not yet been resolved.

●55% are experiencing difficulty implementing their QA methodologies and practices within the agile development timeframes.

●Over 50% of CIOs are still not clear where the testing focus within Agile should be applied.

●Only 14% stating they had no issues with testing within the agile development framework

The Real Challenges Ahead● Dynamic System Development Method - Growing but no clear blueprint

●45% of organisations have adopted the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM), which is gaining in popularity.

●It focuses on early testing, collaborative testing across all stakeholders (business analysts are now participating in testing activities), creation of repeatable test cases, end-to-end user experience, independent testing, prioritisation of tests (requirements and then risk), test driven development and risk based testing.

●However DSDM still remains a generic framework based around the principal “never compromise quality”. With no clear blueprint on how to successfully deploy, its methodology remains an on-going challenge within Agile developments.

The Real Challenges Ahead● Big Data and Analytics - Growing by the day

●This is a relatively new challenge to QA and testing and a level of maturity in this area is someway off, as its focus moves towards data-centric testing practices.

●This in turn is driving an increased demand for new testing tools and greater automation in order to manage and analyse the vast volumes of data generated from such activities.

●This area holds one of the biggest challenges for the Testing community. Historically data warehouse projects have been the most protracted, expensive and poorly delivered projects of any undertaken. Imagine the consequences of delivering inaccurate analytics to the wider world or the consequences of delivering bad data within the big data arena.

What have you learned?● The days when customers tolerated poor quality software, as a consequence of

ignoring low priority issues appear to be a thing of the past. End user intolerance for application failures or errors, security or performance issues, or inconsistent customer experiences through different sales channels has become game changing for QA and Testing.

●Digital transformation and the adoption of innovative technologies is driving QA and Testing functions to greater levels, higher exposure and new demands.

●Testing is shifting more towards the end-to-end customer experience. This requires a true understanding of the IT infrastructure, networks, business processes and business objectives along with industry domain knowledge.

●Testing as an Offshore unit becomes more strategic and important as acquiring domain knowledge is rarely guaranteed.

●Quality is being forced up the priority list of almost all new projects, where brand awareness and consumer experience have become the most important measure of the success of a project.

Remember…

If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you