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Tag: PractiTest

  • Survey Sees App Testing More Widely Distributed

    Survey Sees App Testing More Widely Distributed

    A survey of 900 application testing professionals conducted by PractiTest, a provider of a platform for managing testing tools, suggested the number of organizations that have dedicated testing teams is declining at a steady rate.

    The survey found a 15% decrease in organizations with dedicated testing teams that have six or more members. At the same time, however, the survey found only 18% of respondents reported that all testing is done by individuals that are not part of a dedicated testing team.

    Joel Montvelisky, test specialist and chief solution architect at PractiTest, said that shift indicates that more organizations are steadily incorporating testing within DevOps workflows. In fact, more than 60% of respondents said DevOps and Agile processes led to teams being more organized and stable, with two-thirds (66%) reporting that development teams were releasing features more frequently with more functionality.

    However, only 38% of respondents said they were active participants in a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflow. A full 90% said they needed to coach or train other members within the team and just over half (54%) reported that estimations of the time required for development and testing were accurate.

    Two-thirds also said collaboration with developers is also improved when applying DevOps processes, with more than half reporting fewer serious bugs made it into production. More than half also said they monitor software in production and deployment environments. The number of testers who defined themselves as engineers has gone up by 14% year-over-year. However, only 44% report that automation has replaced 50% or more of their manual testing efforts.

    A full 95% or more of survey respondents identified application programming interface (API) testing, Agile methodologies, functional testing and scripting as high on their list of priorities. In contrast, big data testing, internet of things (IoT) testing and machine learning/artificial intelligence (AI) testing were cited as important or very important by only 60% of respondents.
    Finally, about a third of survey respondents noted that non-testers are now involved in testing activities.

    Montvelisky said the PractiTest survey makes it clear that while developers are a little more involved in testing than they were a few years ago, organizations still relied on testing specialists that are becoming more integrated into DevOps workflows. This is especially important as more organizations launch digital business transformation initiatives that require them to build software using the same types of DevOps processes that independent software vendors (ISVs) employ.

    It’s still too early to say just how far testing might shift left toward developers, but as testing becomes more automated—thanks, in part, to increased reliance on AI—the types of tests that will be conducted by a dedicated testing team will evolve. In fact, it’s unlikely automation will eliminate the need for those teams any time soon. Rather, testers will be augmented by AI technologies that will help them to keep pace with the accelerated rate of application development enabled by wider adoption of DevOps best practices within organizations both large and small.

  • Survey Sees Application Testing Shifting Further Left

    Survey Sees Application Testing Shifting Further Left

    PractiTest, a test management platform provider, published a report today that suggests professional application testers have become more adept at working within DevOps workflows.

    The annual survey of more than 1,000 application testing professionals finds that 80% of all application testing within organizations is being done by test engineers, test leads, testers and automation testers. A full 92% of survey respondents also noted they are working within the context of an agile methodology, while 42% cited DevOps specifically. Half of respondents said they work within the framework of a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform.

    Significantly, more than half of respondents (59%) said testing is shifting left within their organization, but only a third (33%) said programmers participate in the testing process.

    PractiTest CEO Yaniv Iny said that level of DevOps inclusion suggests that, rather than shifting testing completely left on to the shoulders of application developers, a more nuanced approach to application testing is taking hold as professional testers learn to work within the sprints that make up a DevOps workflow. A full 90% of respondents said testing has become more automated within their quality assurance (QA) processes.

    By now, most application testers have come to terms with automation and, increasingly, AI, said Iny. The assumption now is that large swaths of the testing process will be automated, Iny added. A full 97% of respondents said that functional testing automation was either important or very important for them to succeed, while 96% said test automation patterns, principles and practices are also critical.

    Usage of behavior-driven development (BDD) as a testing model has also increased, with 27% of organizations now employing it to go beyond simply testing functions.

    However, the survey also found that, instead of automation decreasing the size of testing teams, those teams are getting larger. The number of organizations with 16 or more testers increased by 10% to 34% compared to a year ago. That suggests organizations are launching either more complex application development projects or launching multiple projects at the same time as they embrace digital business transformation initiatives, Iny said.

    The survey found nearly 70% of respondents have at least five years of experience. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of respondents reported that their income was not affected by the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, nearly half of respondents (54%) reported that they were concerned about job stability, an increase of more than 30% from a year ago.

    The pandemic did change the way testers acquire new skills. The number of testers reporting that they attended online conferences, meetups and seminars increased to just under half (49.5%), up from 40.5% in 2019. Participation in online communities and forums grew to 44%, while only a third of respondents receiving any kind of formal training.

    Testing professionals with five to 10 years of experience earned an average salary of $89,000 in North America, which compares to $76,000 in Australia/New Zealand, the survey also found.

    Application testing as a distinct discipline doesn’t appear to be fading away anytime soon. Rather, organizations appear to be investing even more in testing to deliver higher-quality applications.