Understanding the Key Testing Bottlenecks
It goes without saying that modern teams need to continuously innovate, adapt, and embrace the newest trends in order to stay competitive and deliver customer-centric solutions. Despite remarkable advancements, many teams still consider that testing is a bottleneck, responsible for more delays than any other part of the application development process.
And as we enter 2024, it is critical to consider the issues that influenced the testing environment. This reflection will serve as a navigating factor for teams to understand the major bottlenecks and fulfill today’s rising expectations.
1. Limited Skilled Testing Professionals and Service
“Too little testing is done too late.”
“The developer does the testing.”
“Code reviews and testing processes take time due to lack of testers.”
These are some of the common reasons for the lack of on-time testing. With traditional ways of identifying defects at the last stages, there is less time to fix defects. This can significantly delay product launches.
2. Lack of Test Automation and maintenance
Implementing automated tests is an investment. Although many firms are implementing test automation in some form or another, very few teams have fully automated all of their QA processes. Also, the maintenance of automated tests is more expensive than that of manual tests.
It’s also very critical to understand when to automate, what to automate, and what NOT to automate to avoid automation failures.
3. Balancing Automation and Manual Testing
Striking the right balance between automated and manual testing poses a challenge for QA teams. While automation is crucial for repetitive tasks, it still lacks cognitive ability. There are aspects of testing that still require human intuition and exploration which cannot be ignored.
4. Lack of Testing Insights
Lack of testing insights lead to issues going undetected until later stages, such as user acceptance testing or even production leading to higher costs and lower customer experience (CX). Without proper insights, teams find it difficult to understand the defect reports and find solutions on-time.
5. Ensuring Ethical Use of AI in Testing
With the increased adoption of AI in testing, ethical considerations have come to the forefront. Ensuring the responsible and ethical use of AI in testing, addressing biases, and maintaining data privacy are concerns that need careful attention.
6. Increasing Complexity of Software Systems
With rapidly evolving technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Generative AI, modern systems are becoming increasingly complex, making it difficult to test comprehensively.
Testing Trends Set to Dominate 2024
The lessons learned from the challenges of 2023 set the stage for advanced technologies and new methodologies that will shape the market in 2024.
Embracing these trends will guarantee the delivery of robust, high-quality software applications in a constantly changing technical environment while also improving the effectiveness of software testing procedures.
1. Cloud-based Testing
Instead of relying on on-premises infrastructure, Cloud-based testing is a method of using cloud-based infrastructure, to run tests and test environments.
By using cloud-based infrastructure, teams can be more cost-effective and scalable as they can access a wide array of testing tools and environments, and easily scale up and down the test environments as per the changing requirements.
How can you get there?
You can move to the cloud today with Webomates — a Testing-as-a-service portal to test your application’s functionality! Its end-to-end testing framework helps you in the planning and execution of a cloud migration, along with pre-built solution blueprints, proven tools and accelerators, and dashboards for real-time monitoring.
2. AI/ML-driven Intelligent Test Automation
AI/ML algorithms will make testing smarter, with better test case generation, self-healing features, predict defects, and increased adaptation to evolving application interfaces. Predictive models can assist in deciding where, what, and when to test.
You can use AI in self-healing automation where it enables software to automatically detect and correct issues in test scripts when the UI changes, reducing the need for manual intervention and any maintenance efforts required.
How can you get there?
You can start embracing the key Intelligent Test Automation features:
- Exploratory Testing — It helps to reveal bugs that would go undiscovered during the structured phase of testing. You can perform test design and test execution at the same time.
- Efficient defect triaging — You get an in-depth analysis of automation failures to help the teams reduce their triage time. Tools like the AI Healing help you to accelerate defect prediction and resolution.
- A combination of Shift Left Testing and Self-healing capability can help you test your application right from the beginning of the development process and also fix defects in regression tests quickly.
3. Security Testing
In this digital world, cyber threats are sophisticated and teams must prioritize security to safeguard their sensitive data and protect customer’s personal data. Security testing helps you to identify weaknesses in your application’s infrastructure, configuration, or code. It can also identify common security issues such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other vulnerabilities.
According to DevSecOps report, Security testing remains a serious source of frustration.
How can you get there?
Integrate testing in your CI/CD process by executing automated security tests as a part of the unit testing process. Conducting in-depth Performance Testing and Security testing ensures that the application does not have any web vulnerability that could potentially expose any sensitive data to an intruder or an attacker.
4. No-Code/Low-Code Testing
One trend that is picking up steam quickly is the shift to low-code/no-code (LCNC) platforms. Developers are using No-Code/Low-Code platforms to create, execute, and manage applications without the need for programming or scripting skills. But the complexity of testing these apps rises along with the use of low-code/no-code platforms.
This is where Low-code/no-code test automation can help where test cases can be created rapidly using visual components. With drag and drop functionalities to design test cases, it eliminates the need for manual coding.
How can you get there?
You need the power of AI/ML to generate the test scripts. Webomates CQ can seamlessly integrate into your current CI/CD pipeline and create test scripts that are compatible with various automation frameworks.
5. Mobile Testing
Today’s users rely on apps for everything — banking, retail, healthcare, entertainment — making mobile testing very important to deliver a seamless user experience across various devices, operating systems, screen sizes, and resolutions. Mobile testing involves testing on real devices along with emulators to ensure the application behaves perfectly.
Mobile testing will help you to:
- Ensure that the application’s UI is consistent across different devices and platforms.
- Verify how the application handles different levels of user activity and traffic.
- Evaluate the overall user experience and ease of navigation
How can you get there?
Webomates has integrated BrowserStack, Saucelabs, and AWS devices to help users test their app layouts and designs on real devices. It also supports multi-platform cross-browser testing along with crowdsourcing for network testing.
Conclusion
These are the emerging Software testing trends that one should watch out for in 2024
Teams need to remain aware of the frequent developments in the industry. The arrival of large language models (LLMs) and enhanced AI tools have set the stage for a revolution in testing, one where the software development bottlenecks are addressed, allowing for more streamlined and efficient processes.
At Webomates, we believe in creating a seamless integration between AI, developers and testers, bringing together the best of all worlds.
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