What is going to be the future of software testing? Here are the emerging and latest testing trends that are going to happen in 2020.
According to Gartner, by 2020, the costs involved in developing the IT industry will grow from 3.76 to 3.87 trillion dollars. Therefore, we are going to witness a lot of changes and technological advancements in the IT industry. This burdens entrepreneurs with expectations as everyone is aiming for high Return on Investment (ROI). Software industry has a lot to offer, only if you know how to reap its’ benefits.
Continuous research coupled with new advancements in software industry will help entrepreneurs reap more returns. These new advancements will always come with complexities that can be avoiding through testing. A recent Nelson Halls’ report states that testing accounts for 24% of the software industry spending.
With the Digitalization taking over the world by storm, Software testing is also growing enormously. Enterprises figured out that the deployment of bug-free software is possible only through the collaboration between the QA team and the developer team throughout the development process. Organizations’ focus has now been shifted to shaping and expanding QA teams & the test environment.
We have asked an essential question to our testing experts. ‘What trends do you think would critically affect testing & how software testing and quality assurance industry is going to be like in 2020?’
Based on their past experiences and also through the observation of advancements in the IT sector, especially the software testing industry, they have cast a few predictions on the current software testing trends in the industry.
Top 5 latest testing trends in 2020
1. AI & ML Powered Testing Comes Of Age
AI is spreading its wings in innovative technology. We can expect massive growth in AI in the upcoming years. According to Statista, the total market revenue of AI technology is $14.69 billion in 2019. It is expected to grow further to $118.6 billion by 2025.
AI in testing is not a new concept. It has always been on the software testing radar since 2018. AI and ML became the main directions of software testing and test automation. so, we can’t deny the fact that testing became smarter and faster after the implementation of AI. QA Testers are applying Artificial intelligence coupled with machine learning in Test automation to predict the quality of the tests performed, to write and also to prioritize test cases, to interact with the apps and websites, and so on.
One of our test experts opined that in 2020, application of AI and ML in software testing helps to:
- Optimize test suites to find and reduce unnecessary test cases,
- Prediction of main test configurations like key parameters, user behavior, and key focus areas.
- Identification of test cases which are to be automated.
- Identification of key application points that are highly risky and prioritize regression tests.
- Understanding Requirement Traceability Matrix based on the keywords in RTM, to ensure maximum possible requirement coverage.
The more we use AI and ML in software testing, the faster and reliable results we get from testing. But that doesn’t mean that AI will be stealing the spot. Software testers are the one who has to find whether the AI-extracted data is statistically justified.
2. Big Data Testing
Most of the business sectors have shifted to data-driven technology. These sectors include industries like technology, healthcare, banking, retail, telecom, and so on. The majority of the decisions in these industries are being taken based on the enormous volumes of optimized data. Because of the massive shift of various sectors towards the data-driven world, our experts say that the Big data testing will grow exponentially in 2020.
Enormous volumes of data are being created every minute. In the light of this enormous data, evaluating the Performance and the functionality of the data are the main challenging tasks in Big Data Testing. It is imperative to ensure that the tera bytes of information are verified correctly before performing testing. Considering the amount of data, it is quite challenging to verify and test the data in a given time. Testers require more time to test, and also need more tools to ensure quality.
In 2020, we can observe the rise of new platforms that help testers do big data testing in less time.
3. QAOps Development
We know that DevOps is a set of software development practices that combines Development and IT Operations so as to shorten the software development lifecycle (SDLC). DevOps helps teams to focus on more important tasks like building features, fixing bugs, and releasing frequent updates.
DevOps helps the Developer team and the business operationalists to collaborate. Similarly, QAops abridges the collaboration between Test Engineers and developers teams through the integration of Software testing into the SDLC. Through this QAOps, QA engineers will work in alignment with developers throughout the continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) process.
4. IoT Testing
IoT market has been burgeoning. Previously, there used to be a thing called ‘IoT-Device.’ But now, every device, every product is a part of the Internet of Things (IoT) Technology. Devices that communicate are not only limited to computers, laptops, and smart mobiles but also include objects that have been equipped with chips to gather data over the network. So, we can say that the entire IoT market is depending upon the software, and thus, this is going to be the latest testing trend for 2020.
According to norton.com, there will be more than 21 billion IoT devices in the market by 2025. According to a blog post by Symantec, We may observe the usage of IoT devices to direct other Botnet-powered distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. So, it is necessary to perform IoT testing. Monitoring communication protocols & operating systems requires a lot of time. QA teams should equip themselves with knowledge relating to IoT devices; the usability, scalability, and also Performance of such IoT devices.
IoT testing will help us assess the safety, to test the compatibility of versions, to evaluate data integrity, to monitor the delay in connection, and to perform scalability testing.
5. Test Automation & Agile Teams
Today, the IT sector is increasingly dependent on Automation. The software testing industry is no exception. Our experts said that 2020 is going to be a year of transition in the software testing industry and that we can see a continuous rise in the adoption of automated testing practices.
Many enterprises are using Agile and DevOps processes to achieve ‘Quality At Speed.’ Test automation has become a significant component in the Agile & DevOps process to perform repetitive tasks, to detect quality bugs faster, to provide continuous feedback loops and thereby ensuring test coverage.
Test Automation will not eliminate manual testing. Some testing types, such as Exploratory testing or usability testing, need to be carried out manually. Performing manual testing, along with Test automation, will help robust QA teams to squeeze the most out of software quality assurance.
Henceforth, we should no longer consider test automation as functional. We have to consider it as a full-cycle requirement.
Final Words on the latest testing trends
In short, software testing and quality assurance are going to witness a lot of changes and advancements in the coming future, just like any other development element. That’s our list of latest testing trends in the software testing industry in 2020. Did we miss anything? Please share your thoughts on the latest testing and QA trends in the comment section.
QAonCloud is a QA-as-a-service based company. Our dedicated testing team provides the digital economy with Test automation services that are reliable, Cost-efficient, and also effective.