Software Testing is, today more than ever, a crucial skill for all companies. The new rules of the economic game require speed and quality in the provision of systems. Driven by the generalization of digitalization and devops, and by the complexity of information systems, the practice of software testing is evolving very quickly. New methods and tools are emerging to move testing from a simple quality control activity to a quality engineering activity .
Testing must now be fast and agile. He must find bugs more quickly, and have the ability to monitor and improve his performance continuously.
In this article, I invite you to discover the six trends that I already see as major in 2023, and which I think will continue to shape the software testing landscape throughout the year and in the years to come.
1. The transition to test automation continues to gain momentum
Test automation has been a major trend for several years, and it will continue to take hold this year.
NelsonHall estimates that by 2025, the average annual growth rate for the test automation services market will be 9%, compared to -5% for manual testing services.
Test automation allows you to combine speed, efficiency, reduction in test costs, and better motivation in teams. It allows testing on a large panel of data, ensuring better coverage than manual testing. It also reduces the risk of error (false positives/false negatives), by relieving teams of the high repetitiveness of the non-regression testing activity.
Automation in 2023 is becoming increasingly intelligent and easier to implement thanks in part to low code/no code tools. The AI/ML models that we will talk about in the following point augment it to make it even more reliable and autonomous.
2. The adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
In addition to increasing test automation, AI/ML models make the testing practice more efficient as a whole. We then speak of “Cognitive QA”.
The large volume of data required by Machine Learning is recovered from defect databases, production logs, ALM and ITSM systems (user stories, test cases, incident tickets, etc.)
Among the different ‘AI-based Analytics’ approaches, we can note:
Estimation of test coverage using NLP: identification of possible links and similarities between requirements, user stories and test cases.
Predictive QA: allows you to identify code changes in a new version, to deduce the impacted test cases and to predict potential defects.
Artificial intelligence therefore increases testing activity at different levels, not only in its most mechanical and repetitive aspect which is test execution. Companies that know how to use Cognitive QA wisely should benefit from significant gains in productivity, quality and competitiveness.
3. Shift-Left et Agile/DevOps
The strong Agile & DevOps trends will certainly not run out of steam in 2023. It is even very likely that they will continue to gain strength.
In a constantly changing technological context, software development must continue to constantly reinvent itself. The Shift-Left approach with TDD and BDD still has a long way to go in teams who often still wait until the end of the cycles to test.
In 2023, there should also be greater awareness that Shift-Left is not just a question of tool or method. The desire to consider the test first (Test-First) must be strongly present in the teams. It is a change in mentality in which we must accept being wrong, and having proof of it as soon as possible thanks to the test.
4. Infrastructure and test data
The Word Quality Report 2022 indicates that increased attention to infrastructure and provisioning of test data is one of the pillars of the transformation from a “quality assurance” approach to a “quality engineering” approach.
Companies are increasingly moving their non-production environments to the Cloud, although there is still much to be done. According to WQR, half of organizations provision only 25% of their test environments in the cloud.
The advantage of moving test environments to the cloud is that it is much simpler to automate their provision; lead times are shorter and cycle time for testing activity is reduced.
Better support and management of test data is another trend gaining momentum this year. The tools that are increasingly integrated into Continuous Testing platforms make it possible to aggregate data from multiple sources (synthetic data, hidden production data, etc.), secure them, and make them compliant with regulations.
Governance that allows you to know the state of the data and refresh it during each test cycle is essential to keep up with the development rate, and therefore becomes one of the major concerns of test teams.
5. Cloud Testing
The migration of information systems to the cloud offers new playing fields for the practice of software testing. Cloud infrastructure enables distributed, rapid and large-scale testing.
The testing practice is reinventing itself to better understand and test the architectural characteristics and quality attributes that make it interesting to move from IT to the Cloud: on-demand provisioning of environments, use of resources according to demand , easy and fast scaling.
All types of testing (functional, performance, etc.) can be carried out in the cloud and the tools and frameworks must facilitate their implementation and use.
6. Crowdtesting
Mobile applications have invaded the world over the last fifteen years. This veritable tsunami has brought about a transformation in testing practice with the rise of Mobile testing.
Crowdtesting is an approach that will better validate the acceptance of the application by its end users. The principle is to have a set of independent testers contribute to the validation of the application in semi-real conditions. Testers do not follow a test plan, but have an exploratory approach correlated with their end-user needs and sensitivity.