Current trends in software testing
Latest in Testing
In recent years, there has been a great evolution in the field of software testing with new trends coming into IT industry services. The introduction of new technologies has brought the latest updates in software design, development, testing, and delivery. The top priority of businesses across the globe is cost optimization. In doing so, most IT leaders believe in the integration of the latest IT techniques for their organization.
Today, companies are integrating their testing, earlier in the software development cycle, with testing methods like Agile.
Some companies also hire independent testing companies for their software testing needs. In this way, they incur less cost-on testing and do not even require in-house resources.
There are several other important trends in the software testing world. Thus, there is a strong need to adapt to the latest testing trends for all the software industries in the world, which will help them to adapt to the requirements of the modern world.
Major trends for 2022
Here are the major trends for 2022 that are changing the face of software testing:
- Functional Testing for strengthening software quality
Functional Testing is an essential element when it comes to strengthening software system quality. It not only maintains smooth functionality throughout the process but also ensures the stability of the end result. The following are the main types of Functional Testing –
Unit Testing
System Testing
Integration Testing
User Acceptance Testing - Integration Testing for the smooth working of the system
In Software testing, it is important that every system component gets integrated with the different application modules to ensure smooth working of the entire system. Integration testing helps to identify system-level issues such as module integration issues, broken databases, etc., and helps to identify them while developers resolve them at the earliest. - UAT (Acceptance Testing) as the final phase of testing
As soon as a product is developed, even before it is moved to production, the product owner will check its functionality and usability by performing User acceptance testing. This is actually the final phase before launch where the stakeholders check if the product is as per their requirements and also check if there are any errors while moving ahead with the functionalities. Primarily, a user acceptance test is an important and final phase to test whether the software is functioning as per the requirements. - Regression Testing for continuously changing application
Regression testing is one of the software testings types that should be performed when there is a change made in the application or when there is a new feature added to the application. With this testing practice, tests are conducted to ensure and check the previously developed and tested software still performs well even after a change is made in the software.
This is an effective functional testing type that should be taken up, especially when there are continuous changes made in the application as this testing process checks for any new bug or error in the existing software and is more so a verification process for the software. - Automation Testing for speeding up testing
Test automation is critical for continuous delivery (CD) and continuous testing (CT), as it can speed up the release cycles, increase test coverage and ensure quality software releases.
Software automation testing involves the usage of tools and test scripts to test the software, and these automated test results are more reliable. Hence, test automation speeds up the testing process, ensures faster releases, and delivers accurate results.
Automated software testing surpasses manual testing techniques in huge aspects. Automated testing involves automation analysis throughout the entire life-cycle of software testing to provide unswerving functionalities and operability. It certainly has got more benefits than manual testing –
• Enhanced Software Quality
• Improved Documentation
• Reduced Testing Duration
• Decreased Overall costs - User Testing to improve the application for the end-users
One of the important types of software testing that is gaining more popularity in recent years is user testing. This form of user testing refers to a technique wherein real users take up the role of testers to test the interface and functions of applications, websites, mobile applications, or services.
In this method, the real users test the apps by considering various real-time use cases and the feedback from these users helps in improving the application for the end-users. This is a usability technique to gain valuable insights from users regarding how they feel about the product. - Accessibility Testing to improve convenience
As the Internet becomes a central part of everyday life, it is imperative that your website provides equal access and usability to every user including those with disabilities.
Web accessibility is the practice of making Web sites accessible to all, particularly those with disabilities. As the Internet becomes a central part of Technology, it is imperative that Technology must be designed and developed in such a way that it provides equal access and usability to every member of the target audience. It is becoming increasingly important for the government and educational institutions as they try to meet their obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act and various policies and guidelines for online web publishing/hosting.
Accessibility testing seeks to cater to different disabilities affecting:
• Vision e.g., visual blindness
• Auditory e.g., deafness
• Mobility e.g., spinal cord injuries
• Cognition e.g., autism and dementia
Within accessibility testing, the areas that need to be tested are:
• Text alternatives
• Keyboard operability
• Document structure/heading levels
• CSS contrast/element styles
• Forms and tables
Although accessibility testing is primarily applied to educational and governmental sectors, it should be employed in the private sector as it could improve marketing and profits. - Performance Testing to ensure system readiness
Today’s businesses become successful only if their business-critical mobile and web applications perform well under varying loads and should essentially deliver great performance. If these business apps crash when numerous users tend to use them, then users will dump such apps and would never wish to get back to such apps.
Performance Testing is done to get high-performing digital mobile and web apps.
There are various types of performance testing including:
Stress Testing
Load Testing
Spike Testing
Endurance Testing
Volume Testing
Scalability Testing
Reasons to Execute Performance Testing
Performance testing establishes the accuracy of throughput, scalability, reliability, and responsiveness of a system under a specific workload.
Performance testing is usually executed in order to achieve the following:
• Evaluating production readiness
• Assessing against performance parameters
• Comparison of performance of numerous systems or configurations of systems
• Locating the basis of performance-related issues
• Tuning the Support methods
• Locating throughput stages
• Establishing conformity with performance objectives and requisites
• Encompassing other performance associates’ statistics to assist stakeholders in formulating informed decisions
• To guarantee the hardware configuration suitability for the performance of the application - Selenium Testing for faster releases
Test automation tools are used for faster releases and to get a quicker time to market. Selenium is one of the most commonly used test automation tools which is a lightweight tool and developer-friendly tool, commonly used for automating web applications. - Scriptless Test Automation to improve speed and quality
In the software testing world, Test Automation has evolved to facilitate rapid software releases at the highest quality. Automation has always been interesting, as it reduces the mundane testing efforts and accelerates the testing process. However, the ROI is not always well anticipated.
To maximize the scalability of test automation, ‘Scriptless Test Automation is introduced. Scriptless test automation enables testers and business users to automate test cases without worrying about the coding. It helps to achieve faster results and reduces the time expended to understand the code. - Artificial Intelligence to recognize risks
Software testing is the only premeditated way where an application can be observed under certain conditions and where testers can recognize the risks involved in the software implementation.
Testing, on the other hand, is gradually transitioning to greater automation to ensure maximum precision and accuracy in the journey towards digital transformation. In an attempt to make the application foolproof, the world is turning toward Artificial Intelligence (AI). This implies that instead of manual testing and human intervention, we are moving towards a situation where machines will be slowly taking over. - Robotic Process Automation (RPA), the latest technology
New and emerging technologies, such as Artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning are revolutionizing all industries. Some implementations like self-driving cars are set to change the digital world.
Advances in the software and AI world have paved the way for Robotic Process Automation (RPA). It is the most recent technology which has the capability to re-invent the business process management landscape.