Quality Assurance trends for 2020 and beyond.

“Technology is ever-changing, and it has a knock-on effect on countless things, but what does it mean for Automation Testing?.”

While thinking through this, Enterprise-Infotech team has reviewed an AI-driven Test Automation solution called ‘TestMagic’ which we found to be very forward-looking. We would like to share the top 7 trends that can be seen through 2020 and beyond.

1. Easier Test Script Maintenance

It is the world of emerging AI solutions!

Most of the new age tools are created to address the issue that we traditionally had with respect to the maintenance of test scripts. We strongly believe that this trend will continue for a while.

“Brajesh Kumar, Founder & Global Managing Director of UTS global once told us the way he had approached the testing problem a decade ago. How he had to redo everything with changes in requirements, design and development of the software. His determination of solving this rework challenge gave birth to the AI-based Test Automation tool – TestMagic.”

How many times your test scripts fail because someone changed the object IDs in the background?

The new-age AI-based tools will have continued focus to solve this problem. The tools will become much smarter to auto-heal themselves after any changes to the object properties/hierarchy/positions etc.

This is the year to put tools like this into action.

2. Self-Healing will Arrive

Self-healing may sound like magic but it is possible. We have seen this feature already in TestMagic.

“Data is the new oil and we can use this effectively to arrive at the insights, predict the future, and even enable self- healing of test scripts.”

Here is how it works: The amount of data we gather while performing testing is enormous. This means we should be able to feed in this data to ML algorithms. ML algorithm will keep on learning from the data to identify the normal application behavior. Over time we can start looking at anomalies/outliers as flags for auto-corrections. Since the AI algorithms have their own learning time before they start providing accurate results, tools like TestMagic has an edge when compared to the new tools in the market. With that said, we are also certain that these new-age tools will quickly catch up.

3. One Script concept – The future of automation testing

We agree that the evolution of Digital Omnichannel across the industry has enabled the customer to access the same application across various platforms. To enhance customer experience, it is vital to develop the same application across various OS platforms.

This has increased the paradigm of testing. Coverage now requires testing the same business workflows across various operating systems such as Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.

“What if we have ONE test script that runs everywhere? Isn’t it mind-blowing.?”

We should admit that this trend has been influenced by ONE script feature of Test Magic itself. At least, we do not come across any tools where we can use one script across technologies, over different operating systems, and devices other than TestMagic.

Enterprise-Infotech digital assurance team believes that this is something that companies would be keen to adopt real quick.

4. Automated Reporting is a must

The other daunting task in testing is to find out and triage failed test cases. Again, AI is the savior here. Properly trained AI algorithms can provide more accurate predictions and start triaging the system behaviors which are not normal.

“What if we get a tool that leverages Machine Learning to analyze not only the code coverage of all the existing tests (including functional tests) but the test coverage as well?”

And wouldn’t it be great to know, when a developer checks in code, the exact number of tests you need to run to verify that change?

5. More and More non-Selenium tools will arrive

A lot of organizations are now realizing test automation is not just about the Selenium tool. There is introspection on how much the companies are spending on Selenium skilled resources, overall ROI and TCO of testing, etc.

We are not against Selenium here, we are only trying to emphasize that each department or team has different needs and preferences. Does Selenium cater to all the needs?

Again, AI-based tools are taking an edge here. We strongly believe that this trend will continue. As a testimony to this, today all these AI-based tools are paid solutions and customers are buying and benefiting as they go along.

There are several innovative testing solutions today such as test craft, Mabl, TestMagic, Headspin to name a few..

“It is time to invest in these AI-based tools unless open-source AI-based test automation comes out which can make the game much more interesting.”

6. Efficient DevOps while making Continuous Testing possible

The widespread culture of Agile development has accelerated development while software testing still lags, forcing organizations to cut corners in QA or slow down Dev processes on its entirely.

“We all may agree that instead of speeding up the testing beyond control or slowing down development, companies could adopt to continuous testing for process improvement.”

We can accomplish continuous testing by executing automated testing after each phase of SDLC. This year you will see a lot of traction with respect to continuous testing and offline test automation that can start without the need of navigating through mock-ups.

7. Supporting Rapid Application Delivery

When continuous testing gains attention, a lot of companies will look at creating offerings that will enable accelerated testing and overall delivery. To achieve this, many organizations will need to acquire one of these AI-based tools that aren’t part of their current portfolio, in areas such as performance testing or test management.

This will fundamentally improve the way companies operate and provide significant efficiencies leading to enhanced ROI.

If you’d like to know more about our perspective on QA trends. connect with us via consult@enterprise-infotech.com