It happens every January— panels of experts foretelling what’s on the horizon for politics, food and drink, pop culture, sports, money, fashion, travel, retail, technology and just about any other sector or industry you can think of.
While it may be interesting to know that food experts are predicting 2017 to be the year for coconut “everything” and the fashion gurus, the year that stripes are “in” and skinny jeans are on the way “out”, what is important to know for IT project managers and executives are the trends emerging in the technology sector—and for purposes here, specifically, trends in software testing.
With customer expectations higher than ever and customer patience levels on the lower end of the spectrum, for organizations to stay relevant and competitive, IT industry experts say that 2017 had better be the year of quality and speed and additionally, one with a software testing approach that meets customer expectations and needs with on-time and on-budget delivery.
To stay ahead of the curve and to help make your 2017 one that meets customer expectations and improves the customer experience, let’s take a look at some emerging software testing trends that industry insiders say to be on the lookout for, take advantage of and capitalize on.
1. Quality and speed—Providing the best user experience with the fastest time to market is the new “rule.” Look for speed to increase and quality to improve as teams leverage the latest technologies and tools to deliver the highest quality products as fast as possible.
2. Intelligence –led QA and testing will drive efficiency and lower costs—According to the World Quality Report 2016—released by global consulting, technology and outsourcing leader Capgemini and its subsidiary Sogeti—more companies will be turning to machine-based intelligence to cut costs and drive efficiency. To identify and predict quality issues before they occur, the report states that going forward, there will be a need for more investment in intelligence-driven QA.
3. Software development engineers in Test (SDETs) will be in greater demand—SDETs have been around for more than a decade but with a different role from traditional testing. As test automation becomes more mainstream, by 2020 almost all testers will need to wear the SDET hat to be successful.
4. Internet of Things (IoT) becomes increasingly important to business operations—According to the World Quality Report 2016, organizations will need to adopt a risk based test strategy that creates a secure test ecosystem. To maintain system integrity and boost innovation, it will become necessary for organizations to invest in as-a-service solutions for testing environment management, data management and test execution as well as, higher levels of engineering in testing teams.
5. Open source tools are the future—More and more organizations will adapt open source tools for implementation of Agile, DevOps and Test Automation with support communities for the tools becoming more active.
6. Agile and DevOps rule—According to leading research and advisory firm Forrester, organizations are no longer looking at having centralized Test Centers of Excellence. With test automation developers now part of agile teams, the testing arena is shifting towards quality engineering with testing becoming more progressive testing and also integrated seamlessly with development.
7. Focus towards digital testing—With most organizations involved in the digital sector, the need for digital transformation will mean strategies for digital assurance will be required for optimizing functional testing across channels.
8. Performance engineering will replace performance testing—In order to provide the best user experience, organizations will need to shift strategy—moving from just performance tests to providing performance engineering.
9. Software testing budgets will grow—With the demand for high quality products growing as well as IT trends—including big data analytics, cloud technologies, mobility and virtualization—testing will become more than just a need. To that end, organizations will need to allocate more of their IT budget for software and QA.
BONUS—A Big data prediction!
Testing gets even bigger—With the massive amount of big data, comes the needs for strong strategies for big data testing—meaning expect analytical tools, techniques and frameworks for testing data sets to see major growth.
