Software testing rarely comes to mind when thinking of technology trends. But a closer look will tell you that QA is not just about finding bugs and errors. When done correctly, this complex technical philosophy can help evaluate product ideas, behavioral predictions, analysis of opportunities and threats.
Do you know the software testing market size exceeded USD 40 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at over 7% CAGR from 2021 to 2027? Therefore, software testing is essential, and every business should try to stay on top of their software testing game.
In this article, we’ll look at the popular software testing trends that can drive a positive shift in your SDLC or even impact your overall business for good.
Artificial Intelligence for Testing
AI in software testing makes the process more efficient and more intelligent. AI in testing is still an underrated market. However, you can expect this trend to gain some momentum in the upcoming years. Autonomous and intelligent agents, such as “test bots”, automate activities such as application discovery, modeling, test generation, and failure detection.
AI in testing helps to reduce the time otherwise consumed in manual testing so that teams can focus on other productive tasks such as creating innovative new features.
Some examples of AI in testing include functional testing of web and mobile apps, visual testing of user interfaces, UI element location, and auto-correcting element selectors. Moreover, you can also expect to see AI replace technology stacks completely for automated testing.
Blockchain Testing
Blockchain is increasingly finding more applications in software testing. It is especially fruitful for businesses like cryptocurrency, automotive, and finance. Traditional banks also utilize it for managing banks for financial operations by creating a decentralized network. It won’t be a farfetched idea to say that blockchain testing will transform testing in the upcoming years.
The Blockchain testing trend is an efficient, specialized, and next-generation testing solution to debug the code for delivering productive blockchain applications. As per statistics, the international blockchain market size is projected to hit $39.7 billion by 2025 from $3.0 billion in 2020. It won’t be a bad idea to capitalize on this trend to get an edge over the competition.
Cyber Security Testing
With the emergence of digital technology, there has been the surfacing of cyber security threats as well. The increased usage of web applications and the setting up of new cloud infrastructures have attracted many cybercriminals. Ransomware attacks, data theft, phishing attacks, etc. have all seemed to become a common occurrence these days. Consequently, businesses and teams are paying more attention to cyber security testing than ever before.
Speaking of its expenditure, the spending on cybersecurity globally is exceeding $1 trillion from 2017 to 2021. In the light of cybersecurity attacks, global companies have come forward to strengthen their network security.
Additionally, users share a lot of information online. For instance, they log in to different websites and apps using Google and Facebook accounts and fill in the details of payment cards in various eCommerce sites, social securities, and tax numbers in online banking systems. QA professionals also play a significant role in preventing such sensitive data and user privacy from getting compromised.
Undeniably, it’s safe to say that this is going to be one of the popular software testing trends in the upcoming years.
Chatbot Testing
For years, bots have become a popular and valuable tool. Be it the healthcare industry, hospitality industry, SaaS companies, or whatever business you can think of, chatbots are becoming a part of the customer journey everywhere. They answer customers’ questions, help them navigate through websites, resolve queries, much more.
As per the report, the market size of chatbots is predicted to be more than $1.3 billion by 2024, and it will be a driving force for business communications. Bots are continually conquering the world as a part of robotic process automation (RAP). Bots allow us to minimize the expenses on support while providing a better user experience. However, it all requires smooth and careful testing.
Following are the most popular chatbot testing tools to consider:
- Chatbot test: An open-source tool that helps businesses to identify chatbot’s design issues under seven categories such as intelligence, personality, navigation, error management, onboarding, understanding, and answering. This tool assesses the bot using three testing levels: possible testing scenarios, expected scenarios, and impossible scenarios.
- Dimon: A good thing about this tool is it seamlessly integrates with critical platforms such as Stack, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat. To discover any error in the conversational flow of bots, you can make use of it.
- Botanalytics: From conversational flow to usability, this personalized tool allows you to test each leading aspect of the chatbot.
Customer Experience & Usability Testing
With stiff competition in almost every niche, the customer experience often turns out to be the key to success for digital products. QA engineers need to pay more attention to the user experience and try to incorporate diverse user preferences in the testing cycle.
They need to make sure that users with different levels of tech experience can figure out how the feature works. The upcoming years are going to see higher spending on UX/UI testing with the emphasis on delivering the most engaging and unique experiences possible. It’s about time that you start paying attention to it too.
Codeless Automated Testing
Codeless automated testing is one of the popular software testing trends that we can watch out for. The codeless automated testing tools are usually built on sophisticated AI technology and visual modeling. It allows for the faster formation of test cases. Using such tools, QA engineers can quickly generate easy test case scenarios with zero coding and reduce the time spent on recurring test cases. So it’d be safe to say that you need to look out for this software testing trend in the upcoming years.
Here are some advantages of codeless automated testing:
- Low Learning Curve: In such testing, test cases can be generated even if the user has no familiarity with programming languages or coding. Therefore, it does not take extra time and effort to learn to start building the test cases.
- Effective: As the learning curve is slow, the generation of test cases does not need complicated syntax. This way, the test case formation is fast and accelerates the overall effectiveness of the automation process.
- Simple to review: Since the test cases can be generated without any code, these are easily readable and clear for those who do not understand code. Thus, such test cases can be reviewed effortlessly by non-technical stakeholders.
Wrapping Up
For businesses, QA strategy should be rethought to perform outstandingly in 2022. Not doing so would put the websites or apps at risk of becoming redundant. So, how do you stay away from this?
The key is to focus on intelligent orchestration of DevOps strengthened by test automation and AI, improving test data, environment management, and optimizing QA budget to meet the post-pandemic requirements. You could also figure out which approach is best for you. Moreover, you could also adopt the trends mentioned above temporarily or make it your own.