Get Ready to Check the Impressive Software Testing Trends in 2021:
Learn what trends would critically affect you and how to help yourself ready for the game from this informative article.
Nowadays, we witness enormous changes in technological advancements as the world is becoming digitalized.
The year 2021 too will mark the continuation of tremendous changes in technology and digital transformation, thereby requiring the organizations to constantly innovate and reinvent themselves.
Read our earlier “Top Industry Trends Articles” here:
Quality at Speed:
The exponential and unprecedented change in technology affects the way in which the organizations develop, validate, deliver, and operate the software.
Hence, these organizations must consistently innovate and revamp themselves through finding the solution to optimize practices and tools to develop and deliver high-quality software quickly.
Accounting for roughly 30% of the total project effort, software testing is an important focus for changes and improvements. Testing practices and tools need to evolve to address the challenges of achieving “Quality at Speed” amid the increasing complexity of systems, environments, and data.
We have presented below the top trends in software testing, and many of which have already emerged over the past few years. We observed that Agile and DevOps, test automation, artificial intelligence for testing, and API test automation are the most noticeable trends in 2021 and over the next few years too.
Along with these trends, there are testing solutions like Selenium, Katalon, TestComplete, and Kobiton which have the potential to address the challenges in software testing.
What You Will Learn:
Top Software Testing Trends in 2021
Watch out the Top Software Testing Trends that one should anticipate in the year 2021.
Let’s Explore!!
#1) Agile and DevOps
Organizations have embraced Agile as a response to rapidly changing requirements and DevOps as a response to the demand for speed.
DevOps involves practices, rules, processes, and tools that help to integrate development and operation activities to reduce the time from development to operations. DevOps has become a widely accepted solution for organizations which are looking at ways to shorten the software lifecycles from development to delivery and operation.
The adoption of both Agile and DevOps helps the teams to develop and deliver quality software faster, which in turn is also known as “Quality of Speed”. This adoption has gained much interest over the past five years and continues to intensify in the coming years too.
Also Read=>Ultimate Guide for DevOps
#2) Test Automation
In order to implement DevOps practices effectively, software teams cannot ignore test automation as it is an essential element of the DevOps process.
They need to find the opportunities to replace manual testing with automated testing. As test automation is considered to be an important bottleneck of DevOps, at a minimum, most regression testing should be automated.
Given the popularity of DevOps and the fact that test automation is underutilized, with less than 20% of testing is automated, there is a lot of room to increase the adoption of test automation in organizations. More advanced methods and tools should emerge to allow better utilization of test automation in projects.
Existing popular automation tools such as Selenium, Katalon, and TestComplete continue to evolve with new features that make automation much easier and more effective too.
For the list of best automation testing tools for 2021, please refer here and this list here.
#3) API and Services Test Automation
Decoupling the client and server is a current trend in designing both Web and mobile applications.
API and services are reused in more than one application or component. These changes, in turn, require the teams to test API and services independent from the application using them.
When API and services are used across client applications and components, testing them is more effective and efficient than testing the client. The trend is that the need for API and services test automation continues to increase, possibly outpacing that of the functionality used by the end-users on user interfaces.
Having the right process, tool and solution for API automation test are more critical than ever. Therefore, it is worth your effort in learning the best API Testing Tools for your testing projects.
#4) Artificial Intelligence for Testing
Although applying the artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) approaches to address the challenges in software testing is not new in the software research community, the recent advancements in AI/ML with a large amount of data available pose new opportunities to apply AI/ML in testing.
However, the application of AI/ML in testing is still in the early stages. Organizations will find ways to optimize their testing practices in AI/ML.
AI/ML algorithms are developed to generate better test cases, test scripts, test data, and reports. Predictive models would help to make decisions about where, what, and when to test. Smart analytics and visualization support the teams to detect faults, to understand test coverage, areas of high risk, etc.
We hope to see more applications of AI/ML in addressing problems such as quality prediction, test case prioritization, fault classification and assignment in the upcoming years.
#5) Mobile Test Automation
The trend of mobile app development continues to grow as mobile devices are increasingly more capable.
To fully support DevOps, mobile test automation must be a part of DevOps toolchains. However, the current utilization of mobile test automation is very low, partly due to the lack of methods and tools.
The trend of automated testing for mobile app continues to increase. This trend is driven by the need to shorten time-to-market and more advanced methods and tools for mobile test automation.
The integration between cloud-based mobile device labs like Kobiton and test automation tools like Katalon may help in bringing mobile automation to the next level.
#6) Test Environments and Data
The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) (see top IoT devices here) means more software systems are operating in numerous different environments. This places a challenge for the testing teams to ensure the right level of test coverage. Indeed, the lack of test environments and data is a top challenge when applying to test in agile projects.
We will see growth in offering and using cloud-based and containerized test environments. The application of AI/ML to generate test data and the growth of data projects are some solutions for the lack of test data.
#7) Integration of Tools and Activities
It is hard to use any testing tool that is not integrated with the other tools for application lifecycle management. Software teams need to integrate the tools used for all development phases and activities so that multi-source data can be gathered to apply AI/ML approaches effectively.
For Example, using AI/ML to detect where to focus testing on, needs not only data from the testing phase but also from the requirements, design, and implementation phases.
Along with the trends of increasing transformation toward DevOps, test automation, and AI/ML, we will see testing tools that allow integration with the other tools and activities in ALM.
Conclusion
These are the Emerging Software Testing Trends that one should watch out in 2021 as we live in the world of unprecedented exponential changes driven by technology and digital transformation.
Organizations and individuals need to remain aware of the developments in the industry. Keeping up with these trends would give test professionals, organizations, and teams the opportunity to stay ahead of the curve.
Are there any other interesting Software Testing Trends that you foresee in 2021? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below!!