Software testing and quality assurance have become important cogs in the overall process of deployment. The margins between software development and QA too, have been steadily diminishing, bringing us to a question- what do QA and testing have in store for 2021?

Software testing and quality assurance- these two practices have been consistently evolving over a long period of time now, making rapid improvements in their stride. Till a very short while ago, Quality Assurance, or QA, was considered to be an entirely separate function but is now increasingly becoming a crucial part of the entire development process as a whole.

In fact, such has been the increasing dominance of QA these days, that a number of software development service providers have already begun adopting it as a part of the software development process.

As far as the overall evolution of the IT industry is concerned, this change in perception of QA has had a big role to play. With increased competition, delivering products and services on time has put somewhat undue pressure on the companies to deliver. This is where quality control has become so very important.

Such has been the interdependence of cutting-edge software development and QA that the current software trends encompass the best security and performance measures on offer.

Because technologies are changing at a rapid pace, quality assurance analysts tend to face a number of issues in their daily lives. However, reaching the market as quickly as possible is something that’s always at the back of the mind.

1- Blending AI & ML With QA

Bringing AI and ML into QA eliminates the problem of companies getting sucked into an automation trap, wherein testing teams fail to take care of the issues found in the previous test runs due to a lack of time.

If traditional software testing methods are anything to go by, the business functionality brings about an evolution in the applications with changing requirements.

With Artificial Intelligence and Machine Language in the midst, there can be a better sorting of the test cases, where the ones on a high priority get tackled first. The test automation code also gets the liberty of automation in itself- a huge plus.

2- QA Automation To Play A More Vital Role

With continuous delivery of paramount importance today, the same could not have been achieved without the advent of automated testing. Thanks to the overall agile approach, any bugs and problems get timely detected, making QA enjoy a higher degree of efficiency.

With QA automation, it becomes easier for QA engineers to establish a proactive testing frequency, facilitating quality checks at every level of SDLC (software development life cycle).

3- A Change in The Traditional Roles of Testers

Because the overall situation is becoming pretty dynamic as time goes on, testers will be required to enhance their skill base with the motive of being able to handle more job roles.

With Agile methods and DevOps coming into the foray(more on these two later), the collaboration between developers and testers is imminent in the near future. With such a situation, coding skills will only take things so far.

4- DevOps and Agile Methods

As digital transformation continues to become the staple of today’s world, digital testing too is also set to continue for the foreseeable future. With increasing competition, companies are continually experimenting on the methods, and agile methodologies are taking all the accolades there.

QA that’s driven by customer experience is definitely a trend to look out for in the near future.

As far as DevOps is concerned, the traditional lines between testing, operations, and development get taken care of. The agenda behind this is to lead to a better pace of deployment, reduce the time taken to hit markets, and also ensure higher ROI in the process.

With more elaborate demands, project and release changes, automation of software testing and QA outsourcing will take the world in the coming months.