Software Testing And Next Decade

When I first thought about writing my first ever blog for LinkedIn during holiday period, I thought briefly of whether it would be “software testing and 2020” OR “Software testing in Last decade and Next decade”. After detailed thought, I zeroed in on “Software testing in last decade and next decade” and the main reason is that one year seems a very small to look for overall trends. I would appreciate your suggestions, comments, thoughts and feedback on this article so it can improve further.

With the start of last decade, IT industry got further matured where offshoring became norm and quality became most important aspect of delivery. In my opinion below are some key take away from last decade:

1.??????Software testing became further important part of SDLC.

2.??????There was significant increase in software testing budget.

3.??????Automation was given very high importance.

4.??????During 2010 we dominantly talked about functional automation and performance testing, and most of the times those discussions started and ended on QTP for functional test and Load runner for performance testing.

5.??????2012 onward, significant discussion started around agile delivery, although how much this was implemented is yet to be determine specially for big size organizations.

6.??????Moving further around 2016, we started talking about DevOps. It was a methodology which needs significant changes in legacy way of working. This needed many changes to take place on processes and infrastructure; hence things are not yet implemented fully.

7.??????In the last two to three years things have moved significantly, industry has become much adaptive to change and very much encouraged to try new things. This has been significantly boosted by Cloud, AI, ML, RPA and much more.

So many things happened during these last few years and the question comes in –

“Was last decade disruptive enough for technology and software testing world?”

?Well, we may agree. Considering changes from the last five years.

Let’s discuss on how these things might move from now on:

An important question to consider, “How will the world of software testing progresses in next decade”. The projected growth of the software testing market is 12% between 2019 to 2023 (as per CAGR) and key driver in the industry will be “Test automation services”. Analysis suggests that “Rise in automation service” is the main driver for software testing industry growth.

There will be a significant rise in automation services because-?

1.??????Every organization wants to improve on delivery cycle timelines

2.??????Organization is keen to transform and there is a zeal in the industry to make changes

So, this is an exciting time for IT industry and below are some of the key takeaway -

Organization – Most of the organizations are adapting for change and the very famous quote of Jack Welch is more aligned currently than ever -

?“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near”.

Having mentioned above quote, I believe most of organization are taking the path of transformation, most of big organization will be moving in agile plus DevOps combination, and testing industry will move around it, with all the technologies support of AI, ML, RPA, cloud and many more open source tools. These latest technologies have been in use for many years and have been adopted by many organizations already, but there is a long way to go.

Testers in industry – On the ground you might feel that things are changing slowly but change is coming in the way we currently work, for an individual in the software test industry it is very important that we adopt the change. Transformation or more automation doesn’t mean that it will replace manual testing completely, but it will increase the scope of testing and dimensions across all verticals hence it needs to be taken in a very positive way. These requirements will need workforce transformation to achieve the success in any organization's goal.

Due to the dynamic nature of the industry, it is very difficult to put some areas which will be good for software test professionals for a long time, but for next 2-3 years below ones will majorly dominate the software testing field -

1.??????SDET

2.??????Agile

3.??????DevOps

4.??????Bigdata testing

5.??????Security testing

6.??????AI

7.??????ML

8.??????Others – Cloud, RPA

?SDET Software development engineer in test is going to be the skill which will have more and more demand in coming years. From the testing inception, testers have been putting up different hats. On many occasions the role is known as subject matter expert, as they usually have very good knowledge of the functionality of the application. With automation being focused in the last few years and going to be focused for upcoming years. It is important that testers can perform required modification in automation tools and open source so they can do required code changes without the need of developers, due to significant work in this area. SDET roles will be the need of an hour and testers who will move to SDET role will find it beneficial.

?Agile and DevOps has been in the industry for quite some time now and this is going to be implemented heavily in upcoming years, especially in big organizations. The quick release time and continuous deployment methodologies, by using the combination of Agile and DevOps have taken the industry by storm. Time to market pressure will be never ending, hence continuous deployment will go hand in hand with testing.

In similar lines I read some interesting stuff about QAOps – we know about DevOps and how its methodology brings Dev and operation team together to achieve shorten timescales for SDLC. QAOps works the same way, it’s a methodology which brings both testers and Dev team together by integrating software testing in CI (continuous integration) and CD (continuous deployment) pipeline.?For individuals working in software testing industry, it will be a much sought-after skill to have knowledge of Agile and DevOps.

Big Data Testing needs quite different approach from regular testing because of the volume and variety of data. To test this kind of complex data, specialized tools are required like Hadoop. Each type of data needs different type of testing, to name a few these can be data ingestion, migration or integration testing. Organizations which manage huge and complex data need different testing approaches and different testing workforce.

As data is base for generating any information which will help organizations to take strategic decisions by using AI or ML tools, it is very important that the data is cleansed in a proper way that it is ready for further use, which will further help any organization in multiple decision making.

?

Security Testing – Software applications have always been vulnerable to security breach even after multiple security features have been put in place. The way technology is getting advance in similar way threat to break these applications are also increasing significantly. The management team of every organization gives highest priority to the security of the end user’s data and information; hence they would always like to achieve full proof possible security. This area is expected to grow in the next decade in a similar way.

?Artificial Intelligence will be a force to reckon with, if we say AI use in automation – it can be classified as extended automation or intelligent automation. There are many organizations who have already leveraged AI benefits. Even If we go with basic AI, can help significantly in many areas of software testing e.g. Test sets optimization, requirement traceability, predictive analysis for defects, logs analysis etc.

Apart from these main areas there are many other areas which will impact industry significantly. Infra and environments will move in the cloud and will add multi-fold values to organization. For test professional perspective, AWS is still a commanding leader followed by GCP (Google Cloud Platform). Other major areas in software testing will be Robotic Process Automation. The main tools used for RPA are UI path, Blue Prism and automation anywhere. Each of these have their own pros and cons, although the current market leader is UI path; software testers can target and learn any of these tools and even if you have zero coding experience you may plan to invest your time learning UI path.

?I hope you enjoyed the quick read, so here I would like to conclude this blog with the following –

Organizations will put significant importance in quality assurance and the Software Testing budget is expected to increase. Although software testing is going to evolve significantly in the next decade and Software Tester of next decade need to move from being just quality assurance to quality engineering and they significantly need to have knowledge of other IT landscape along with latest technologies and tools. We are going to experience massive change henceforth, so let the new era begin!

Happy learning!!!