Software testing has been rapidly growing over the past several years and here are some software testing trends to be aware of in 2017.
- More Open Source Tools-As more pressure is placed on reducing expenses, more software testing teams will look at alternative options in reducing software testing licensing. Adoption of open source tools will continue as Agile and DevOps practices evolve. This software testing trend will continue for the next several years.
- Test Automation Growth-Most software testing organizations already have some test automation practice in place, however, there will be a focused effort to increase the amount of automation that is in place. Companies will continue to focus test automation in the areas of smoke testing and regression testing. Where companies can, they will use automation tools such as Selenium and Appium.
- Performance Engineering-There will be additional attention in the area of performance engineering due to additional data demands and production level failures related to system performance. Companies will begin to require performance testing to be completed prior to production implementation.
- Digital Transformation-More attention will be place on customer satisfaction and this will require a digital transformation with the customer workflow. This will require extensive amounts of software testing to ensure that the customer has a positive experience. This transformation will go across multiple systems and require security in terms of the customer data. In most cases there will be a mobile component to the digital transformation.
- Big Data-Explosion of demand for data due to IoT devices and additional data in order to make better business decisions will require new technology to support the additional capacity. Software testers will need to be able to learn more about Big Data and will need to verify that the data is correct before it is consumed. Platforms such as Hadoop will need to be learned. This will require a solid test data management practice.
- Cloud-Continue cloud adoption will grow as more traditional companies such as insurance and finance begin to slowly transform their business to the cloud. This transformation will continue to evolve for the next several years. Software testers will need to understand more about public, private and hybrid cloud solutions. Software testing companies will also look for software testing platforms to help them accelerate software testing.
- Agile/DevOps-Most companies will have Agile as the default software development lifecycle. As Agile continues to take shape, companies will begin to focus on building DevOps practices. This will also include Continuous Development and Continuous Integration. The DevOps approach will help to build collaboration across teams and help increase the amount of automation used in developing and deploying software. In addition, most companies will start to integrate Security as a part of their DevOps practice.
I hope this list helps. It will be interesting to see where software testing heads as we look at 2017 and beyond.
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