When it comes to leveraging an enterprise solution that can benefit a business in more ways than one, one shouldn’t overlook the importance of software testing. There are several things to take into account before choosing a software testing company that you think is right for your business. The key to all this is your own quality assurance needs. Depending on those needs, your requirements from a software testing service varies.

Before signing a contract with a potential software testing partner, here are a few questions you should find answers to.
 

Does your potential software testing partner have a good reputation?

 
Reputation is not necessarily the most important aspect to consider. But a company with a bad reputation certainly doesn’t fit the profile of an ideal partner. It’s a good idea to look up your potential software testing partner on Google Reviews and their social media pages.

Reputation alone doesn’t say a lot about the quality of a company’s service. Looking up recent news articles on the company can shed some light on the company’s service quality.
 

Does the service’s price tag match its quality?

 
A preliminary research on the company’s reputation should also give an idea on their service quality and how most companies charge their software testing services. The next step is to check the pricing of your chosen candidates and see if their price tags match the quality expected from them. If any of them are charging more than what you would expect for their level of service quality or if the price exceeds your budget, you can cross them off your list.

However, almost every leading IT and Application management services company offering development and testing services would have slightly bigger price tags on their services mostly owing to their success streak and trusted reliability.

Then there are some companies offering services with suspiciously low prices. Chances are they could be either outsourcing testing services or cutting corners. To avoid such companies, it’s best to look into the technical capabilities of the potential candidates.
 

How qualified are your testers?

 
Looking into the qualifications of the people who will be doing the testing for you is also something you should not neglect. You need to make sure they aren’t just generalists who know their way around IT services. They should be specialists with experience when it comes to testing enterprise-grade software. It’s a good idea to speak directly with the testing team and get a measure of how professional they are when undertaking testing projects.
 

Can the candidate company integrate with your tools and technology?

 
This step ensures that the software testing company you are thinking of hiring is familiar with your existing quality assurance practices, and that they can integrate well with the technology you are already using.
 

Conclusion

 
Choosing the right company for testing is a challenge in itself. With software testing being just as important as software development today, businesses shouldn’t shy out of researching their potential partners thoroughly before signing the partnership contract.

The consistent growth of smartphone usage, the emergence of Agile and DevOps, new trends in mobile app development among other factors brought forth a change in software testing practices in general. This subsequently impacted mobile testing as well considering the fact that the modern world we live in is unquestionably mobile-driven.

Statista’s report that over 52% of all worldwide online traffic in 2018 came through mobile phones is a testament to the influence mobile devices have in our day-to-day lives.

Though mobile testing is technically software testing, there are fundamental differences particularly in the testing approach and purpose. People now see their mobile devices as useful personal assistants – a source of information on almost everything which means a great user experience can make a world of difference. If one app fails to grant them a good experience despite serving its purpose, users are likely to seek better ones that are more convenient and user-friendly to use.

This means mobile app testing should not be just about finding and rectifying bugs. It’s about ensuring that the experience will delight target users. Thankfully, modern mobile testing trends are centered on mobile UX. Let’s explore those mobile app testing trends that are already turning heads this year.
 

The Agile – DevOps Ecosystem

 
Both aren’t new concepts, and many software development companies were willing to invest in an ecosystem that combines the best of both Agile and DevOps. But by 2019, this trend garnered a great amount of positive reviews owing to its capability of reducing development time. The combination has also been particularly beneficial for testers and QA professionals.

The combination presently recommends planned use of test automation for even more benefits. As automation demands requirements verification, configuration of toolsets for integration and delivery, automation frameworks etc. it can be efficiently implemented in an Agile ecosystem that facilitates collaboration among the teams involved.
 

Performance testing to Performance engineering

 
User experience is one of the most important factors that determines the success of a mobile app in a competitive market. To ensure better UX, performance testing has been undergoing a slow transformation into performance engineering – something which is garnering praise from the testing community. Performance engineering is how many companies make sure that the components of an app and its network are functioning properly in addition to offering testers better automation opportunities.
 

Open source tools are adopted more

 
Open source testing tools have been helping testers across the globe for many years. But they have never been adopted like they are being adopted now. Though open source tools are generally perceived as cheaper alternatives to proprietary tools, this isn’t always the case. Regardless, open source testing and management tools are proving their mettle in more ways than one.

Open source testing tools are chosen for their versatility allowing testers to cover everything from web apps to various kinds of mobile apps – native, web, and hybrid. Some of them also come with code libraries for popular programming languages, and are both customizable and adaptable. Though the security of open source tools is questioned by many, a number of large organizations embrace open source services – a testament that their pros outweigh their cons.
 

Embracing IoT

 
In this era, people use a number of connected devices with or without knowledge popularly referred to as the Internet of Things. Gartner forecasts that there will be more connected devices in the world soon estimating the existence of over 20 billion connected devices by 2020.

As IoT gains momentum, companies investing in IoT are trying to figure out how to address the questions raised on the security of the new technology. Considering the increasing security threats to IoT, QA professionals will have to put in more effort to perform static and dynamic testing on IoT devices.

At present, IoT testers are finding it a challenge to establish security priorities, and to define ideal testing tools and conditions. But IoT’s rapid growth leads us to assume that the security aspect will definitely improve considerably this year. It’s now easier to find a reliable application management services company that can help organizations handle IoT apps and tools.
 

Conclusion

 
QA experts, testers, as well as developers may find the seemingly unstoppable rise in the number of mobile devices quite unnerving. But this is the future we used to read about years ago. It’s here and it brings with it a number of trends that open up new challenges for mobile app testers. It’s now vital to understand testing trends and how a cohesive testing strategy can ensure quality that meets the changing standards of mobile users.

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Even SMBs have started realizing the benefits of test automation while myths and misconceptions surrounding the core concept of test automation keeps increasing. Contrary to popular beliefs, the advent of test automation techniques didn’t affect the demand for manual software testing. Organizations simply realized that a combined Manual – Automated testing practice grant greater benefits provided it’s implemented thoughtfully and effectively.

Though test automation essentially reduces the time to deliver high-quality products, it doesn’t always lead to quality success. Many organizations that are interested in test automation or are planning to invest in the practice may not be fully aware of its limitations.  There are hidden costs in implementing a complete test automation strategy.

From hiring QA professionals/Quality Engineers to test management and automation environment maintenance, it may overwhelm businesses that aren’t prepared to completely invest in the technology without preparing for it beforehand. This blog is for those organizations that are planning to jump on the test automation bandwagon, and discusses the various limitations of test automation.
 

Test cases should be designed for repeatability

 
Many organizations tend to implement test automation whenever they feel like accelerating quality feedback. This is possible only if the test cases are created for repeated use. Test automation is not very easy to set up either, demanding the technical team to invest hours in setting up, troubleshooting, and maintaining it.

If the test cases can’t run repeatedly even after exhausting a lot of resources setting up automation, leveraging test automation won’t grant much benefits at all. The key is to prioritize repeatability for maximum ROI from your test automation strategy.
 

Relying too much on test automation can do more harm than good

 
You may have read about organizations relying on test automation to scale product quality processes. This is more common in companies offering Agile software development services, and it works. You can get streamlined, much more efficient development cycles.

However, relying on test automation too much can end up causing a lot of issues, primarily due to the fact that test automation simply doesn’t apply to all kinds of test cases especially when scaling QA processes in an Agile ecosystem. A more balanced approach combining both test automation and manual testing offers better chances of scaling success. There is also the fact that a product that’s constantly evolving with each sprint will need you to allocate more resources just to maintain automation test scripts.
 

Test automation demands serious expertise & technical skills

 
Just because you have automated test scripts and a team with basic knowledge of automated testing doesn’t mean you can implement test automation and reap the best of its benefits. It requires a high level of expertise and technical skills to write test scripts. As a matter of fact, the technical skill requirement is one of the biggest limitations of test automation. You won’t easily find an expert automated tester like you would find an expert in software development.
 

Conclusion

 
With all the limitations we have discussed right now, we still can’t conclude that test automation isn’t a worthy investment. It is a big move that demands big investments and total dedication for a medium-sized business with limited resources. Nevertheless, if the business has the right talent and a great strategy, they won’t ever regret investing in test automation.

2018 was an exciting year for software testing. Agile adoption reached 97% and Forrester declared the year as the Year of Enterprise DevOps. The cultural and technological shift in testing in 2018 however is just the beginning. As 2019 begins, more testing trends will gain momentum resulting in testing hitting even more critical milestones.

That said, let’s check out what 2019 has in store for software testing.
 

Cross-functional teams for software quality

 
This trend isn’t new but it was only adopted by a few organizations in 2018. Many organizations went ahead and created cross-functional teams to evaluate and ensure software quality. Many companies have started considering cross-functionality a necessity to solidify the trust between everyone involved in software delivery while facilitating better collaboration and coordination.

As organizations prioritize software quality even more today, we will see this trend continue to be adopted by more organizations in 2019. The added bonus is the fact that QA teams get to contribute more by leading initiatives that improve the software’s overall quality.
 

QA will be QE

 
Until now Quality Assurance (QA) has been the approach of choice for a software development company that prioritizes product quality. But today, QA became too sophisticated encompassing a number of aspects including test automation, DevOps, and pipeline integration etc. More skills and technologies are involved now. Conclusively, QA evolved beyond what it used to be.

With quality being the priority for companies providing Agile software development services, and considering the rapid evolution of QA, the transformation is referred to as Quality Engineering (QE) now. As more teams in more organizations start embedding quality throughout the software development process, QE will expand proportionately. And that’s what we will start seeing in 2019.
 

Load testing will become a staple

 
Load testing was once a very challenging discipline which made it relatively less accessible to many testing teams. But technological advancements and the advent of new tools have made load testing accessible and intuitive. Load testing used to demand specific hardware that not all testers can get their hands on. It was an investment many organizations weren’t willing to make.

Even if the team did manage to procure the hardware, they are often required schedule tests in advance as many teams will be sharing the server during development. The advancements in cloud brought with it a solution to this particular issue. Cloud-based load testing platforms are now available that make it possible for testers to use multiple servers simultaneously thus eliminating scheduling conflicts. This will lead to wider adoption of continuous load testing in DevOps environments in 2019.
 

More demand for test automation

 
The increasing adoption of Agile and DevOps demanded many organizations to redevise their testing strategies to stay ahead of the curve. One of the major changes that followed was test automation that supplements manual testing. Companies that leveraged test automation became better at it in no time seeing a number of benefits in the process including faster testing cycles and improved test coverage for starters. It’s safe to assume that test automation levels will increase even further in 2019 as more organizations come forward to invest in it.
 

Conclusion

 
These are just the tip of the iceberg. There will be even more software testing trends that will turn heads this year as the field grows in importance while technologies simply it even further. More people will be pursuing a career in QA and more enterprises will realize how QA grants them high quality products that far outshine their predecessors.

For an organization to become successful by selling their products or services, they’d need to ensure that their products/services are of great quality. Enterprises are keen on observing trends that help them improve the quality and speed of their products/services. This is why they need great QA and software testing strategies.

However, for these strategies to grant benefits to an organization, they should be aligned with the organization’s business goals which is easier said than done.

The first step is to develop an actionable QA strategy itself.
 

Developing the strategy

 
The concept is similar to what the marketing and finance department does in an organization. They always find a way to devise appropriate strategies that tie to the organization’s larger business goals. A QA strategy can be developed the same way. However, the software development team should be involved as well to understand the actionable potential of the strategy better.
 

Why align QA strategy with business goals

 
Many organizations do not take QA strategies into account when planning to determine an optimal approach to achieving the business goals. The QA process itself might not be given the priority it deserves. To improve the product quality, simply facilitating QA and testing aren’t enough. The team involved with the product should be able to understand the tangible value in investing the organization’s resources in QA. This would help the team define QA goals that correlate with the business goals.
 

Figuring out the right goals

 
Not all organizations have established or at least transparent business goals. If the QA team is to align their goals with the business goals, they will need to get input from the various stakeholders across the organization. This also helps the QA team understand how product quality impacts the success of the business. The key is to understand the high-level goals. The QA team can then work backwards to devise a strategy that aligns with the high level goals.
 

Challenges to know about

 
Tying QA strategy to business goals isn’t going to be easy. Even the nature of the people involved can give the QA team a hard time. Another major challenge for the team is to ensure that the QA goals are quantifiable. The company should decide which metrics are linked to their business’ success, and the QA goals are created based on these chosen success metrics.
 

Conclusion

 
The software development company should be willing to invest time and resources into creating a QA plan that would contribute to the success of the company by improving product/service quality. This is the only effective way to benefit from QA. If the company is simply not willing to invest in a good QA plan, they will start running out of steam in the long run.

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