The future of testing in the IT industry The World Quality Report 2020-2021 is a comprehensive review of the current situation in QA worldwide and its future trends. More than 1,750 interviews were taken during the survey. The organizations shared their experience on the challenges they faced over the past year. The document also reflects the top software testing trends of the present day and the foreseeable future. The World Quality Report 2019-2020 stated that the mission of QA was the continued improvement of business results. What has changed since that time? How did the upheavals experienced by the companies determine the perspectives of QA? And what is the software testing latest news? Read the article below to find the answers. Digital transformation The current non-typical world situation has forced drastic changes in all business processes that would have taken much longer otherwise. QA, as well as other areas of IT, have been actively adopting digital strategies. The remote nature of business has become commonplace over the past months, and it requires digital support. That means the entire IT sector and QA in particular need to adjust to the new reality and thus to come up with breakthrough solutions. Moreover, companies are innovating in order to stay competitive in the context of decreased investments in software testing. The evolution in Agile and DevOps adoption The number of organizations implementing Agile and DevOps models in their processes is growing slowly but steadily. The release of new apps is on the rise. That means the testing should start earlier in the development lifecycle and be carried out more often to ensure high product quality. More than half of the respondents said they sought to test as early as possible. At the same time, 40% of the survey participants reported that the process made up one-third of their entire work on the product. The level of mastering the above methods depends, among other things, on the business location. The US is way ahead of Europe in this regard. Although these approaches help companies deliver products to the market more frequently, difficulties in their implementation remain. Specifically, 42% of organizations admitted their Agile experts were not skilled enough in testing. However, the teams can address these challenges by testing earlier in the development, leveraging automation tools, and introducing quality dashboards. Test automation trends The advantages of automation are evident. It allows QA engineers to manage their job more effectively, have better visibility of processes, and reduce the time dedicated to testing. However, such a technology is still expensive, and only one-third of the companies report the ROI from this tool. To make it more affordable, the organizations should more actively use AI in testing and build self-maintaining tests where the scripts are modified automatically. Since last year, there has been a 3% increase in the number of organizations automating their unit testing and user acceptance tests. Among the most frequent constraints on the adoption of this technology is the lack of test automation skills, which was named by 29% of the research participants. Another common issue is that the tests can't keep up with the frequent changes to apps and fall behind. However, the overall automation rate continues to increase. In particular, 68% of the respondents say they have everything needed to apply this technology to their processes. AI among key software testing trends Experts had a wide-ranging discussion of the role of AI in testing in the previous World Quality Report. Today it's the center of attention again. 88% of organizations state that they turn to AI when testing. Predictive analytics and Machine Learning help 80% of QA teams in creating test environments and test data. Three-fourths of the survey participants reported they used AI-based QA dashboards in their work. However, 71% of the respondents admitted they would like to see an increase in the implementation of AI-driven tools into their testing processes. One-fourth of the companies reported that their teams don't have the sufficient skills to leverage AI techniques. Therefore, organizations should promote a culture that focuses on test automation. How to keep up with the software testing trends Here are a few tips on how companies can prepare for the future now. We recommend that they take the following steps that align with the above-mentioned observations: To bridge the gap between the developers and the testers by giving quality the dominant place across the entire organization. To build more automated tests using smarter testing frameworks, AI-driven tools, and removing the skill gaps of your QA team. To get ready for force-majeure circumstances by drawing up a well-designed disaster plan and a business continuity plan. To manage test environments and test data with the help of AI-based techniques, establishing a center of excellence. Conclusion The global situation has made substantial alterations to the course of development of the QA industry. The events of recent months sped up the digitalization in software testing and forced organizations to introduce smarter tools into their workflows. However, to build a complete picture of the latest QA trends, we encourage our readers to turn to the full version of the World Quality Report 2020-2021.
A Quality Assurance Report is a must-have component of the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC). It makes the product testing process and results completely transparent to the project customer and to the rest of the team working on the software. A well-prepared report determines whether the application is ready to release or not, based on the data concerning its quality. It also improves QA team management as it uncovers its weak points and helps to avoid them in the future. Writing a professional report is a more difficult and responsible task than it might seem at first glance. Not every QA specialist can create a report which will be both informative for technical specialists and understandable for the management on the first try. That is because a professionally prepared document shows the product quality and demonstrates your QA engineers’ expertise to the company’s executives. Make use of our guide for QA reporting; for example, daily reports that reflect an interim stage of testing or test summary reports after the completion of the whole testing process. A good practice is to provide a sprint test report if you use Scrum. QA reporting is also conditional on the type of tests. Functional, integration, unit, and usability testing - all of them have very different goals and focus on different aspects of the app. No matter what type of testing you carry out, there are some attributes your report should have and data it must include. Below is a guide of five simple steps that will make your QA reporting effective. Be person-oriented Experts with different roles in a team are unlikely to look at one issue the same way. Product managers are focused on the further release of the app. So for them, the issue of compliance or non-compliance of the test results with the exit criteria will be highly important. Developers expect a QA report to be ‘bug-based’, as their task is to remove them with regard to your observations. Lastly, QA managers are most concerned about organizing the work of QA engineers, depending on their operational efficiency and project scope. That is why the percentage of tests performed and defects detected is of high priority to them. Taking all this into account, try to emphasize the information relevant for the team members you are reporting to. Exercise a ‘user-friendly’ style Whoever reviews your statement, it should as far as possible be: Сompact. Avoid abundant and abstract data that are needless to make progress in product development. Easy-to-understand. Choose full words over abbreviations that are typically used only within your department. Change intricate terms to generally comprehensible expressions. Illustrative. Reinforce your figures with graphs, charts, and screenshots. Highlight the completed tasks in green, and the cases that require immediate action in red. Honest. Never conceal one piece of information to draw attention to another. Always double-check the accuracy of the calculations. Write up the risks of the product and its readiness to release. Remember the action plan In order to be of practical use, your report should be business-driven. It means that following the report, the manager will know whether the product is ready for release or not and what revenue to expect out of the project. The data should also make clear where more resources are needed and where to reduce expenditure. In addition, the overall amount of tests, the number of successfully performed tests, and the time spent to accomplish the tasks allow the executive to evaluate expert knowledge and the work efficiency of the QA department. For this reason, a good QA report should contain not only the facts but also certain actions to perform. Include prescribed information We strongly recommend QA engineers to indicate the following data in every statement: the details of the product, e.g. its name and version; the duration of the test cycle according to the report; the testing environment, such as test server model, OS version, hardware type, resolution, and other relevant features; the information on the testing itself, namely the types of tests performed, their total number, how many tests were successful and how many failed, how long one test cycle takes, etc.; the information about errors and detected bugs by modules of product, corrected issues, etc.; a list of tests that couldn’t be run and the reasons why; assessment on whether the product meets the exit criteria and suggestions for improvements, if any. Of course, the document can include some additional information, but the points mentioned above are expected to be there. Give an assessment There is hardly any use of bare figures. What is the good of the number of defects detected without further explanation of their consequences? The executive won’t perceive whether they are major or minor and whether they can proceed with the project as it is or not. And what's the point of specifying the ratio of tests passed and failed? There is none if the project manager won’t understand whether the testing can be finalized or not. So don’t just mention the issues - access their criticality and significance as well. Particularly, focus on the exit criteria that were not met and the effect likely to result from it. Remember that a well-thought-out QA report is not only about what you draw the manager’s attention to but also about the current condition of the product. Take advantage of our guide to make your reports even better.