Quality Assurance & Software Testing Trends for 2024 – The Year of QA Done Right

After climbing out of the abyss that 2023 left, organizations must reevaluate how they approach software development. Now, it’s change or perish. And before jumping into all the exciting tech, methodologies, and innovations, firms should polish their core.

For businesses, the supreme task is perfecting what they have before moving on. And to realize it, they need to commit to the transformations that 2024 is about to bring.

Changing the Mindset: Quality Is a Priority

Remember the mantra of the last couple of years? Faster releases, keeping up with customer expectations, surviving the harsh rivalry and world realities… Everyone’s probably tired of hearing this all the time.?

That’s why it’s so exciting to see the shift we’ve been honoring for so long – value over volume.?

It doesn’t matter how fast companies ship their products. Or how “revolutionary” they are. If projects are done haphazardly and offer no real use and proper UX to customers, they will fall apart.?

So, in 2024, QA will become a part of business assurance. As Capgemini put it:

“[QA] has evolved and integrated with business to successfully deliver business outcomes by meeting business standards and objectives and raising overall quality standards.”

Last year, we dedicated one of our articles to the evolution of a “tester’s” role. It’s no longer about finding bugs. And the transformation of quality assurance is well-deserved. As the impact it can have on the SDLC and the organization overall is exceptional.?

Because of this, we’ll see an even bigger involvement of QA in business processes. And the pivotal goal will be advancing quality through result-oriented decisions.?

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From now on, organizations should think like QA engineers:

1. Quality is a priority.
2. A good product takes time, and it’s not worth rushing it.
3. Instead, create a process that facilitates desired outcomes, not the other way around.

So, how will this new mindset impact businesses and QA companies on a large scale? Let’s further explore the trends that will drive quality culture forward.

?? World Quality Report 2023-24

Embracing Agile in New Ways

Agile methodologies have been around for over two decades. Yet, most organizations introduced their practices instead of banking on the underlying principles:

• Continuous improvement.
• Adaptability.
• Customer-centricity.

Hence, businesses ought to expand Agile’s reach.?

Teams working via its methods will offer enhanced quality and customer satisfaction. But it’s foolish to forget that they function within the broader context of the enterprise environment. When this environment does little to nothing to foster agile approaches, the influence of agile teams becomes confined.

So, to achieve meaningful, game-changing improvements is to integrate agile practices throughout the organization, making them a fundamental aspect of business operations. In other words, it means:

1. Accepting customer-driven change.
2. Engaging Agile culture.
3. Accommodating Agile growth and evolution.
4. Developing present experts’ skills to support Agile.

“As agilists, we have an important role to play in reshaping business around the globe and in addressing the challenges of a digitally transformed future. Our destiny lies not in forecasting the future, but in helping bring that future about.” – Curtis Hibbs, Agile Thought Leader at PMI

Given that Agile is the most successful framework right now, imagine what it can do when implemented to its fullest potential. Precisely that we hope to find out in the upcoming years.

Agile’s Success Rate

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Reimagining Test Automation

Over the last decade, QA’s influence on business processes has been growing. The shift-left approach and QAOps, in particular, demonstrated what not isolating QA engineers can do. This striving for closer collaboration in the name of a greater product will result in an even stronger focus on connecting QA to procedures that influence quality.?

That’s why automation ought to take a new form to motivate better cooperation. Specifically, low- and no-code automation will become more of a standard. In fact, Gartner predicts that in 2024, 65% of app development will be low-code based. And for good reasons:

• Scriptless automation lets organizations create test scripts with minimal coding knowledge, democratizing the testing process.
• Collaboration between developers, QA engineers, and business analysts becomes easier, fostering a shared responsibility for software quality.?
• Testing turns more accessible, allowing teams to focus on comprehensive test coverage without compromising on efficiency.

This connectedness accelerates the development cycle and ensures that quality assurance is effectively integrated into the development process.

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But as we always say, automation is not a silver bullet. Don’t jump into new trends without evaluating how it works for your system. For now, most organizations are experimenting with low- and no-code solutions. And that’s the crucial thing – finding out whether something is truly valuable for business before going all in.

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Developing AI within Testing

AI is turning into the MVP for many organizations. So, it’s only logical to use it to advance testing. As Capgemini’s data shows, 77% of businesses steadily invest in artificial intelligence to optimize QA processes.

So, we’ll see an increased usage of AI for:

• Examining and assessing code.
• Providing recommendations for enhancements.
• Employing predictive analytics to forecast defects.
• Automating routine and repetitive tasks.

While AI has the power to accelerate delivery and improve quality, it’s important to acknowledge that it’s still an evolving technology. As a matter of fact, 31% of organizations don’t yet see value in adopting artificial intelligence for quality refinement.?

We can attribute such positioning to AI risks outweighing its benefits in some cases. So, while AI’s potential is vast, it is not yet a mature strategy. It’s likely that there’ll be secluded AI implementations for distinct QA processes, such as automation and test case analysis.?

But as the technology matures, we can anticipate even more sophisticated applications and a broader spectrum of advantages for QA processes. And this slower, so to say, introduction of AI into testing is actually a good thing. We all know how banking on AI turned out for organizations and startups last year.?

So, a more thought-out approach to evolving tech is wise. Working on proper development pathways and establishing valuable AI implementations will be the new trend for 2024.

?? How AI Is Changing Automation Testing In Quality Assurance

Rediscovering Manual Testing

Coming back to the topic of automation, it’s clear that for the past years, organizations strived to use it as much as possible. We all know its benefits well. But automated testing had one huge issue – it made businesses forget about the value of manual QA.

Hence, companies coming back to seeing manual tests as assets is truly heartening.

“You can’t automate everything. And you don’t need to” – something we often mention in our articles. And this year, such a notion rings truer than ever. Manual testing will continue to be a crucial part of QA for 73% of organizations.?

Manual testing shouldn’t be forsaken. As it provides many perks that automation simply can’t tackle (yet):

1. It offers a human touch in exploring UIs, identifying visual discrepancies, and finding unpredictable issues.?
2. QA specialists can adapt quickly to changes and better understand user experiences.?
3. Manual testing is irreplaceable in executing ad-hoc tests and ensuring the real-world usability of the software.

So, it’s high time to move away from “automation vs manual” and embrace “automation + manual”. And in the upcoming years, organizations will seek to combine these two for better business outcomes.

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Up-Skilling & Re-Skilling QA Specialists

As companies involve QA expertise in more business processes and decisions, the role of QA engineers will also transform. In other words, to support the ongoing shift, they will need to amplify their skills.

Firms are reshaping their perspective on quality engineers, prioritizing development knowledge over traditional testing expertise. This also echoes the previously mentioned focus on close-knit cooperation between QA specialists and developers. Where to facilitate such a change, organizations need to upskill their testing teams to become full-stack professionals.?

It’ll have an incredible impact on QA engineers. They’ll become more technical and integrated with the development process, with an emphasis on proactive involvement, technical skills, and a broader understanding of product quality.

“…development experience can be very valuable in QA because it gives you an understanding of how and why software is created and how it should work. It can help you create better tests and [better understand] possible problems in the application.” – Alden Demuth at Ministry of Testing

The evolving role of quality engineering goes beyond safeguarding quality. Teams are now expected to adopt a development-focused persona, creating utilities for broader organizational use. The integration of AI, ML, and the synergy between DevOps and agile practices further propel the transformation of quality engineering.

?? Skills QA Engineers Should Have Now and in the Future

Trusting in Continuous Testing

Last but not least, continuous testing (CT) will gain widespread adoption. How so? Well, the shift-left approach is slowly but surely becoming “shift all the way”. Plus, the active adoption of DevOps and continuous integration/delivery (CI/CD) practices points to the need for greater control over quality.?

In other words, true quality is taking the crown. But it doesn’t mean that firms will slow down their releases in its name (there’s no going back now). Instead, we’re likely to see a stronger emphasis on incremental improvements via continuous testing.?

Back in 2020, CT’s market value stood at $1.46 billion. By 2028, it’ll increase by over 300%. Combining this data with the edge continuous testing brings to organizations, we can be sure of CT’s rising implementation.

CT even has an impact on the two big topics of 2024 – sustainability and security. By rectifying issues early in the development cycle, companies minimize the environmental impact associated with software defects and vulnerabilities. And the proactive nature of CT enhances cybersecurity by fortifying applications against potential threats before they can be exploited.

The evolution towards widespread continuous testing signifies a holistic transformation in how organizations approach software development.

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In his blog post, Don Macvittie titles 2024 as “the year of testing”. Yet, perhaps, it should be “the year of QA done right”. Everyone understands the importance of good quality assurance. But it seems like, for the most part, companies kept getting distracted by new methodologies and tech – something that promised them heaps of gold.

The best thing about QA is that it makes no promises, only tangible results. And when organizations implement it properly, they will reap all the benefits it has to offer.

And to paraphrase Macvittie:

“It is time to consider implementing the level of QA we always knew we should have.”

What direction will be leading in software testing & QA this year?

Share your thoughts with us!