Software Testing in the past and today . Part 2️⃣: "7 Trends in Software Testing 2022".

Revolution in software testing: 7 trends that will fundamentally change software testing.

QA (quality assurance) is no longer just about finding bugs and defects; QA has become a much more complex technical philosophy, including evaluation of a product idea, behavioral predictions, analysis of opportunities and threats.

2022 promises to be a dynamic and exciting year. We expect some fascinating new testing trends, models and strategies to come into circulation in 2022. In this article, we'll give you a compact and concise look at some of these trends that we can look forward to in the coming year. If you are a software tester, QA subject matter expert, or just have a keen interest in software testing, this post should be at the top of your reading list.

1️⃣ UAT (Acceptance Testing).

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a type of testing that is performed by the end user or the customer to verify/accept the software system before the software application enters the Production Environment. UAT is performed in the final testing phase, after functional, integration and system tests have been performed. The main purpose of UAT is to validate the end-to-end business flow. This type does not focus on small defects, e.g. spelling errors, nor on system testing. User Acceptance Testing is performed in a separate test environment with production-like data structure. It is a type of black box testing where two or more end users are involved in the testing process.

2️⃣ Testing Internet of Things (IoT).

IoT is emerging as an extremely dynamic and fast-growing concept in the technology space. It is an integration of vast networks: devices, people, processes and technologies that collect and share data over the Internet. According to a research report by Gartner, there will be 25 billion Internet-connected devices by the end of 2021, up from nearly half that amount in 2019, when there were about 14 billion devices. These figures clearly show the growing interest in IoT, especially in the healthcare sector. A new IoT strategy will be extremely necessary, especially in the coming year, to protect all software vulnerabilities from potential threats and ultimately ensure stable data security. Accordingly, the demand for software testers is increasing enormously. They perform testing and ensure security, data integrity, performance, compatibility, usability and authenticity, monitor delays, etc. For this reason, it is in order for QA teams to expand their knowledge and further develop their capability to soon become sought-after professionals in IoT testing.

3️⃣ QAOps (QA & DevOps).

Today's ever-advancing digital world requires faster release of applications with as little degradation in quality as possible. QAOps is the combination of QA & DevOps. In the past, QA's role was limited to testing application software. Now, in turn, it plays a critical role in all phases of software development. DevOps is about Operations and Development, subject matter experts working together to maintain the entire software lifecycle. DevOps encompasses a set of software development processes that focus on fixing bugs, making features, and dealing with frequent updates. QAOps is gaining traction in software testing trends because it enables extensive automation of these processes and greatly improves workflows between IT operations, software development and QA. QAOps enables software testing using the Continuous Integration (CI)/Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline, rather than the QA team working on it separately. In short, QAOps follows two principles:

🅰️ Execution of testing

and QA processes with CI/CD to achieve high quality and fast handover to the customer.

🅱️ QA specialists

work in parallel with the development team for faster time to market.

4️⃣ Scriptless test automation.

Test automation is clearly on the rise with rapid web development. Manual testing alone is no longer enough to meet current software development requirements. A new trend in so-called scriptless test automation is already being practiced by leading software IT companies in the industrial sector to maximize the scalability of testing. It helps software testers and developers run their testing cases automatically without having to think much about the codes. Such companies achieve faster results within a short period of time with scriptless test automation. Most IT organizations are striving to implement this automation in their testing processes.

5️⃣ Customer Experience and Usability Testing.

The global pandemic and its aftermath have impacted software testing, among other technology areas. In particular, it has forced QA professionals to pay more attention to customer experience, or user experience. As the audience of software products grows, the product itself becomes more diverse. More and more people are using new products for the first time, and that's precisely why it's important to ensure that users with different levels of technical expertise can understand how this or that feature works.

6️⃣ Big Data testing.

Applications that are based on huge amounts of consumer data should be analyzed and tested regularly. The healthcare, financial, banking, retail, and telecom sectors are constantly dealing with Big Data. Therefore, the demand for Big Data testing will continue to grow. The specificity of Big Data testing is to check the success and accuracy of data processing, but not every single part of the software product. QA specialists use commodity clusters and other subject-specific support tools to accomplish this task.

7️⃣ Blockchain testing.

The most promising among market technologies works as a data base not only for the Bitcoin system. The global blockchain technology is already used, for example, for supply chain management, food trade, logistics system and other industries. Its mission is to provide the highest level of security for any economic transaction. Therefore, the IT market is in urgent need of QA specialists with accurate domain know-how who are able to provide professional testing services.

This year forced many companies to fundamentally rethink their QA strategy in order to operate more efficiently and gain a competitive advantage in the upcoming 2022. Software testing is a constantly evolving field. Adopting new technologies on the cusp of transforming this industry will give many companies a tremendous advantage over their competitors who do not. But that doesn't mean the company has to bear all the risk of implementing the technology alone.

✅ andagon GmbH follows industry best practices and is the German leader in adopting the latest trends in software testing, providing our customers with unprecedented speed and flexibility. Write to us to learn how we can support you on your journey. ✅