Virtualization Technology News and Information
Article
RSS
Sauce Labs 2018 Predictions: The Year of Continuous Testing

VMblog Predictions 2018

Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018.  Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Leo Laskin, Senior Solutions Architect, Sauce Labs

The Year of Continuous Testing

By necessity, the way software is developed and tested has changed. Companies with a digital footprint - which is virtually every enterprise in the world today - compete online and on mobile platforms everyday to delight their customers, steal share, and increase revenues. The old software development cycle - specifying, designing, coding, and testing in a serial fashion - simply does not work in this new economy. In order to keep pace with the competition and deliver the highest quality user experience, testing must be automated and executed - early and often - throughout the development cycle.

These evolving needs are driving the quick adoption of continuous testing (also known as the "shift left" approach to testing). As organizations increasingly realize that to keep pace with the fast-moving digital economy and consumers' expectations, they are adopting testing approaches that allow for agility and allow them to adapt and fine-tune their software from the get-go. Here are some trends we can expect to see the developer testing realm as organizations begin realizing the need for flexibility - and speed:

Continuous testing gets its due in the mobile arena
The year-over-year growth of mobile shopping has finally surpassed traditional desktop purchasing. With this swing, a greater emphasis on mobile testing is needed to ensure app experiences are up to snuff. In order for developers to keep pace with rapid deployments associated with mobile, continuous testing will need to play a pivotal role. In order to maintain a competitive advantage in a mobile-first world, more developers will be adopting continuous testing in 2018.

Organizations don't automate everything yet -- but develop a culture of intelligent automation
Though we've already begun to witness a cultural shift in how organizations approach testing, 2018 will see a continued shift in the role manual testers play -- and an increased demand for intelligent automators. Organizations are departing from the traditional testing paradigm of taking manual test cases and writing automation on those tests and shifting toward revamped tooling and intelligent frameworks to implement automation from the get-go. Automation is the future: and the upcoming year will see businesses increasingly deploy automation within their organizations -- beyond just using automated deployments.

AI testing grows up
With mixed success in ‘17, AI testing will take a major step forward next year. Currently, AI testing can help develop tests, but the key breakthrough will feature AI testing that can easily identify issues within tests without needing QA staffers to pinpoint problems themselves. This will cut down on cyclical review time and speed up deployments, pushing efficiency boundaries for release times.

##

About the Author

Leo Laskin 

As Sauce Labs' Sr. Solutions Architect, Leo Laskin has over 10 years of experience in Quality Assurance. Starting with manual testing and moving into automation and leadership, he has seen many of the ups and down of testing. At Sauce Labs, Leo is responsible for providing in-depth technical advice to customers about how to be successful with their automation and CI/CD efforts. In prior roles, he held QA engineering and leadership positions to help automation efforts. He's also a contributor and supporter of Selenium since 2010, the most popular QA automation tool in use today for testing of both web-based applications as well as mobile devices. 

Published Monday, January 22, 2018 7:34 AM by David Marshall
Comments
RobertoRomello - (Author's Link) - January 31, 2018 5:21 AM

Thanks much Mr. David for publishing such an informative article here. Great article about 'Continuous Testing' also, I really enjoyed reading this. And, "the way software is developed and tested has changed" - I am firmly convinced with this as this is very true and nobody can deny this statement. Then, I agree with you about the rise of AI testing as automation and artificial intelligence shows us that there is so much more coming on in the future. Thank you!

To post a comment, you must be a registered user. Registration is free and easy! Sign up now!
Calendar
<January 2018>
SuMoTuWeThFrSa
31123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031123
45678910