The world is at the cusp of technological disruption and is here to remain for an extended time. The software industry has evolved over the decades, and consequently, testing- an integral part of the development cycle has also witnessed several changes over the last four decades.
Evolution of Software Testing
In the 1980s, waterfall methodology was in use, and manual testing prevailed. Within the 1990s, we had bulky automation tools which were highly expensive, unstable, and had primitive functionality. This era also involved experimentation with various developmental approaches like Scrum, XP, RAD (Rapid Application Development).
From 2000, the age of open-source frameworks began. Faster release cycles were the topmost priority of companies at that time. Agile gained immense popularity while XP, Scrum, and Kanban became part of the standard process in the Software Development Life Cycle. Then came the 2010 era, which was also about scalability, writing tests, and findings bugs faster. Within the same era, cloud testing started. By then, people have realized the importance of more server space and faster processing which further led to the emergence of DevOps, Continuous Testing, and CI/CD integration.
In 2020, tools around collaboration, automation, application performance monitoring, security testing had mushroomed.
One of the most noticeable trends in 2021 was codeless test automation and artificial intelligence in testing. The codeless testing tool is undoubtedly a saviour for those with limited or no knowledge of writing codes in test cases.
The codeless testing tools provide a hassle-free process that uses object, data, model, and keyword methods to formulate tests. The scripted testing tools help foster user business testing with user-friendly interfaces that are easy to comprehend.
The future ahead will be automation testing using Machine learning and AI. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning play a significant role in predicting the test script and acting accordingly per specific web pages’ requirements.
Before talking about the future of Machine learning and AI-powered apps, let’s explore the various trends of writing test cases.
Evolving Trends of Writing Test Cases
- Classic code-based approach: This includes manual testing in which test cases are executed manually without any automation tool.
- Multiple Frameworks: Entails various frameworks like linear scripting, modular testing, data-driven, hybrid testing etc.
- Keyword driven codeless frameworks: This uses a table format to define keywords or action words to execute the function
- Behavior Driven Framework: Involves writing tests in plain descriptive English grammar.
- NLP Driven Frameworks: User can use Natural Language to write the test steps. It generally involves AI-powered natural language automation, coupled with a next-gen recorder
Among all, keyword-driven and NLP frameworks are probably the most important and ground-breaking frameworks in the testing domain. Keyword-driven test creation is an easy framework to write test cases using simple keywords. NLP framework allows users to create test cases seamlessly in a simple, natural language that is easy to interpret and comprehend. It is a perfect mix of symbolic human-like comprehension and machine learning, which extract insights from unstructured data and improve decision-making.
Testing Whiz is a codeless test automation tool that rapidly builds and deploys automated test cases using keyword and NLP framework. Join our forthcoming webinar “Future of test automation” on 29th September 2021, 4-5 pm EST, to gain more insights on test frameworks.
Future of Validation
Validation is a crucial process followed by Test Creation. This validation testing determines if the existing system complies with the system requirements, performs its intended function, and meets organizational goals and user needs.
The future of Validation lies in Smart Validation – which uses artificial intelligence and algorithms. This lethal combination provides accurate and meaningful data that helps companies and decision-makers in a big way. Smart Validation validates results with the combination of AI and proprietary algorithms. It also keeps the company and people data clean by removing bad data, errors, or formatting issues. It also enables domain-based Validation by allowing test users to find up-to-date domains for companies in the event of being acquired, rebranded, or shut down. The future of Validation also holds dynamically updating validation criteria from change requests, tests expanding themselves to test new/closed entry points, etc.
The business stakeholders nowadays demand faster delivery of software and leave no space to comprise on quality. That’s where the use of AI steps in. The lethal combination of Artificial intelligence and Machine learning will play a pivotal role in test creation and test execution.
AI in Analytics and reports
Predictions indicate that AI usage in the testing zones will increase in the upcoming years, most of which apply to analytics and reports. AI will play a vital role in analytics and fetching reports like:
- Test Suite Optimization: Determine and eradicate unnecessary and unwanted test cases.
- Log Analytics: Find exceptional test cases which involve both manual & automated tests.
- Defect Analytics: Detect bugs and defects that can be a risk for the company.
- Predictive Analytics: Helps understand user needs and thus helps teams prioritize and streamlining testing activities.
- Confirms Test Needs Coverage: Takes out essential keywords from the RTM (Requirements Traceability Matrix).
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, automation testing holds a very bright future. Even though the automation tools will build the test cases and code tests, the output of these tools still needs to be validated by the Quality assurance team. Thus, the era of evolution and growth will continue in years to come. Hence keeping pace with the current cutting-edge technologies, tools, approaches, development is the need of the hour for every business and organization.
Join our upcoming webinar “Future of test automation” on 29th September 2021, 4-5 pm EST, to accelerate your digital transformation journey.