Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
AI Is Not Taking Jobs - It Is Empowering Testers
By Kevin Thompson, CEO of Tricentis
Popularized in countless films and books,
artificial intelligence (AI) has long been portrayed as the apex of
technological achievement. Software and machines being able to replicate human
processes - from HAL 9000 to Her - many of these depictions vary in their
purpose from kind and caring to apocalyptic in nature. While our current AI
capabilities are likely years or decades away from what we see on the big
screen, the technology has already begun heavily influencing various industries
over the past few years, and will continue to do so throughout 2023.
The adoption of AI technologies has
coincided with a digital transformation that has seen many business processes
streamlined through virtual solutions. One of these fields that has begun
leveraging new technology in recent years is the software and QA testing
process. Manual testing was a norm for software developers who would spend
countless hours configuring and running test after test to ensure applications
were accurately executing their function.
While this worked, it was not efficient
and compounded the risk of errors occurring more frequently. As a potential
solution, automation was integrated to allow the process to be streamlined
while also reducing the risk of error. Now, AI adoption is opening new doors in
the testing industry.
Is My Job in Danger?
Despite its growing popularity, AI is
still often looked upon with suspicion. Maybe we aren't yet afraid of a robot
uprising or a "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" end of the world scenario, but
there is real worry that AI will soon begin replacing the jobs currently
occupied by real people. Soon, those on development or testing teams will have
their duties usurped by machines and computers who can complete the same tasks
in a fraction of the time, right? Wrong.
When it comes to DevOps, experts are
confident that AI is not going to replace jobs. Rather, it will empower
developers and testers to work more efficiently, leading to these groups
becoming further intertwined in the coming year.
Empowering Employees
In 2023, we will see already lean testing
and developer teams working more efficiently and with less risk as AI tools
continue to be implemented in testing cycles. Integration with AI will augment
people and allow exploratory testers to find more bugs and issues using data
available to them. By locating these problems sooner, the process can then be
completed at a much faster rate.
Additionally, AI-augmentation and the use
of data will help to inform decision-making processes for testing and
development teams by identifying patterns as well as outliers, again boosting
the overall efficiency of the testing process and allowing applications to
continuously ‘self-heal'. With these tools in place, teams can turn their
attention and brain-power to tasks that are more strategically important in
helping organizations continue to move forward.
An AI Augmented DevOps Future
With DevOps teams anticipating AI to deliver significant benefits at every DevOps stage, AI certainly has a significant role to play in the
future of software testing. As more organizations embrace AI, it will continue
to evolve the role of testers and developers who utilize the tools on a daily
basis. However, AI will not be taking
those jobs, but rather intertwining with
teams to create a more streamlined work environment where results and
insights are gained quicker and without error. This will be evident in 2023 as
AI adoption continues to rise.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kevin Thompson is Tricentis' Chief Executive Officer and Executive
Chairman of the Board. He joined Tricentis in April 2021.
Most recently Kevin served as President and Chief Executive Officer of
SolarWinds until his departure from the company at the end of 2020. He
previously served as Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer from July 2006 to
March 2010, and as Chief Operating Officer from July 2007 to March 2010.
Prior to joining SolarWinds, Kevin was Chief Financial Officer of
Surgient, Inc., a software company, from November 2005 until March 2006 and was
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at SAS Institute, a privately-held
business intelligence software company, from August 2004 until November 2005.
From October 2000 until August 2004, Kevin served as Executive Vice President
and Chief Financial Officer of Red Hat, Inc., a publicly-traded enterprise
software company.
Kevin holds a B.B.A. from the University of Oklahoma.