The document discusses the evolving landscape of software testing, emphasizing the growing importance of quality assurance as organizations increasingly recognize its impact on customer satisfaction and revenue. Key trends identified for the next few years include the rise of automation, cloud-based solutions, and mobile testing, as well as challenges posed by agile methodologies and big data analytics. Furthermore, the document highlights the necessity for organizations to prioritize quality in order to maintain brand loyalty and meet consumer expectations in a rapidly changing digital environment.

1. Software Testing - The Road Ahead

2. About the Author
Vipin Jain
Director QA
Astegic Infosoft
(https://www.astegic.com)
Twitter: Vipin_QA
Linkedin:
https://in.linkedin.com/in/vipinqalead
Skype: 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=0B7FE5U4AQw0lX3huSmNsaGNnd
Gc
• Taking Testing to Cloud – Testing Circus Magazine
http://www.testingcircus.com/testing-circus-2014-march-edition/

3. 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.

4. 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
Mobile
Analytics
Agile
Big Data

5. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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.

12. 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

13. 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.

14. 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.

16. 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.

17. Remember…
If it doesn’t challenge you,
it doesn’t change you