The Future Is Here: Top Software Testing Trends 2020

As more and more organizations across different sectors start recognizing the importance of Quality Assurance for the success of their products, the popularity of QA testing keeps evolving. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the testing lifecycle also grows thanks to the introduction of new, smarter solutions.

As a professional QA company, we find our mission in helping organizations ensure the excellent quality of their products and satisfaction of the end-customer. The industry of QA testing is ever-changing, which is why it is important to stay updated on the latest QA trends.

To offer advanced QA testing services to our customers, our team always keeps an eye on the new trends in automation testing and QA. In this article, we have collected some of the most anticipated new trends in software testing to help you stay tuned too!

Software Testing Trends 2020: What To Look Out For?

1. AI and ML

Both Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are the key directions of the future, so they take a deserved place in our list of the latest trends in software testing 2020.

The role of AI in automation testing is huge. In our last article from this series about the software testing trends of 2019, we predicted that QA engineers would likely adopt the concepts of AI and ML to enhance the whole testing lifecycle. Indeed, over 2019, QA teams used these technologies in:

1. Prioritizing test cases;
2. Predicting test quality;
3. Detecting test objects;
4. Classifying defects;
5. Interacting with applications under tests, etc.

As you can see, both machine learning and artificial intelligence in software testing have their purpose, and this trend will remain with us in 2020.

It is predicted that AI in software testing will find its application in all fields of testing related to analytics and reports, including such areas as defect analytics, log analytics, predictive analytics, test suit optimization, and ensuring coverage of test requirements.

The use of machine learning in test automation has the potential to bring the whole QA lifecycle to a completely new stage. Of course, this won’t happen too fast as the concept of AI and machine learning in software testing is still in its infancy stage.

What does this mean for companies? Being one of the biggest software testing trends, machine learning testing will force organizations to encourage their teams to acquire relevant AI skills such as statistical and mathematical skills, knowledge and experience in data science, critical thinking, mental agility, and creativity.

What does this mean for providers of QA services? The benefits of AI in testing are not yet discovered fully, and this technology still has to go a long way to really change the way we engaged in QA testing. Still, QA engineers should already start preparing the ground for adopting it. Every software testing company should focus on obtaining the skill sets needed to integrate AI and ML in the testing process.

2. Security Testing

The World Quality Report 2019-2020 emphasizes on security matters. Although risk compliance and security have always been important, they don’t usually get a dedicated separate section in the reports. In 2020 though, security testing becomes one of the main emerging trends in software testing.

The report outlines the three main objectives that explain its inclusion as a separate topic:

1. Increasing the security of software and products
2. Increasing awareness of the importance of security among all industries
3. Implementing security checks earlier in the lifecycle

Also, according to the report, 52% of respondents report facing challenges with security validation among other technical issues in current applications’ development. Looking at this data it becomes clear that security is going to be one of the biggest concerns in 2020.

What does this mean for companies? Basically, this trend points out that organizations across all industries should focus on ensuring the security of their software more than ever. The cybersecurity will be a big thing in 2020, so companies have to invest heavily in testing the security of their products.

What does this mean for providers of QA services? The growing demands for risk compliance and cybersecurity emphasize the importance of QA testing companies to empower their teams with the tools, knowledge, and skills needed to engage in security testing. In 2020, for the teams of every software QA service, it will be vital as never to be able to recognize various security threats and know how to make products more resilient to them. Also, according to the World Quality Report, moving security tests to the cloud and automating them would be important goals for QA specialists.

3. IoT Testing

Speaking of the latest trends in software testing, it is impossible not to mention IoT testing. Due to the rapid growth of the number of IoT devices all over the globe, the demand for IoT testing is also snowballing. As per Leftronic, it is predicted that the number of IoT devices will cross the point of 30 billion in 2020 and all of them have to undergo IoT device testing for ease of use, security assurance, compatibility of device versions and protocols, scalability, and connection delay.

What does this mean for companies? The growing demand for IoT testing requires companies to ensure they have the right specialists and tools to perform it.

What does this mean for providers of QA services? On QA engineers, this trend will have a much larger impact as they will have to deal with a huge amount of work. In particular, each software QA company will have to enhance its knowledge and skills in performance, security, and usability IoT testing. QA engineers will have to adopt IoT testing tools and integrate them into their existing testing lifecycle.

4. Agile Test Automation

Although test automation has been one of the key QA trends in 2019, it is believed that automation testing trends in 2020 should move to an entirely new level compared with the previous year. According to the report from CollabNet VerionOne, in 2019, 97% of companies reported practicing Agile methods. 22% of companies say that all their teams are Agile and 26% report switching more than half of their teams to Agile. These numbers keep growing, making automated testing solutions even more relevant. Thus, agile automation is expected to be another big trend of 2020.

What does this mean for companies? The main reason why organizations adopt Agile methodology is to ensure delivering high quality and faster pace. In terms of “Quality at Speed,” automation testing in agile scrum will bring companies even more benefits, helping their teams to optimize the testing process. Besides, automation in agile sprints can help organizations to save a significant amount of time, human resources, and costs they need for a thorough QA process.

What do test automation trends 2020 mean for QA services providers? Integrating automated functional testing in agile should make the work of QA engineers simpler. However, it will not substitute manual testing completely. Therefore, for QA teams, this trend basically indicates the need to incorporate automation testing tools into their workflow and find the right balance between manual and automation testing.

These are not all QA trends waiting for us in 2020. However, these are definitely the ones that deserve the most of your attention! Use this article to get on the right track in the new year and keep an eye on the updates that will come along.