The era of software development is now faster to competitive pressure, market and constant product evolution. Quality Assurance and testing can generally fall by the wayside.

Although the expectations of the customer are growing higher than ever, particularly in the case of mobile applications, the patience of the clients is shorter than ever, which in turn resulting in the role of Testing much more vital.

To keep up with changing software development requirements, Quality Assurance must be evolved inevitably that includes adopting new methodologies. Based on the recently published World Quality Report data and the most frequent Quality Assurance demands from our customers. Here are the emerging trends in Quality Assurance to look for:

Test Automation

In order to catch defects and not delay deployment, Quality Assurance services remain the best way to speed release cycles, quickly test fixes and rapidly evolve the code. Now, many companies still running on manual testing and looking to adopt automation testing in their companies which gives a lot of space for improvement.

This methodology is quite challenging for many companies as they should be precisely tailored as per the customers’ requirements. In general, Automation Testing has to deal with already developed automation solution, that does not match the customers’ requirement and has to be re-developed. The increasing number of clients who are worried about their in-house Quality Assurance team if they could be able to handle the newly created solution or not is also one of the challenges we face. The customer needs can be resolved by implementing Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) without script writing and enabling Quality Assurance team to handle the automated tests in a better way.

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 Internet of Things (IoT)

According to the World Quality Report, 85% participants of Internet of Things (IoT) products are the part of their Business Operations. Most commonly Security, Performance and Usability are tested in IoT devices and applications.

The less frequently test aspects such as Interoperability, compatibility and utilisation which also matter to assure accurate user experience.

Testers should not just validate the device itself or its properties instead; also, they have to think out of the box to make sure the unthinkable and rare scenarios. Since the domain expertise is no longer enough for widespread testing of IoT products to guarantee deep test coverage.

Big Data

The rise of Big Data is from the Digital Revolution. There are the big data systems which appear to be too large in volume also to be managed in traditional ways which in turn making all the large companies to frequently ask for strategies to test Big Data.

Not having enough storage space to backup test data or not being able to manage the data on a single server is not the frequent issue. Important aspects when working on Big Data System Quality Assurance are Importance of verifying data completeness and ensuring data quality automating regression testing. The testing should not be a force approach instead it should be surgical by a tester.

New Service Types

New Services are being developed by the Quality Assurance companies besides traditional services, in order to bring value to the customers and help them to gain a competitive advantage on the market.

The new services which are gaining popularity are Quality Assurance Consulting and Test Advisory Services. These services are used to develop or improve the in-house testing strategies from scratch rather than outsourcing testing needs on a regular basis.

Corporate Testing Centre of Excellence (TCoE) is being established by a vast number of testing service providers. TCoE specialists run in-house tests and expand competencies of internal specialists.

You may also like to read: What is Quality Assurance?

Security Testing

It seems that trends are not only about emerging novelties. It’s also about popular topics. Security testing is one topic that will never go out of style. What Quality Assurance providers should be prepared, for now, is to handle a steady increase in systematic testing of any type of software products, and to provide staff augmentation to enhance security testing and products development life cycle.

Mobile applications security is a significant field as the number of mobile devices and applications we download grows rapidly alongside with the number of attacks. Seemingly, the demand for security testing of mobile applications will also increase due to a large number of applications working with users’ personal data.

The importance of security testing of IoT products will also increase in 2017. The vulnerability of the IoT developments manifested itself when the Mirai botnet came up in 2016. It has been utilized by hackers to launch high-profile, DDoS attacks against different Internet properties and services. While there are mechanisms to mitigate DDoS attacks, there is no way to find out what the next target will be. Again, users should be aware of the threat of using simple passwords and opening devices to remote access. Security Specialists should continuously expand their competencies working with all novelties on the market.

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The importance of cloud computing security will also increase. More and more companies are resorting to the use of cloud-based solutions due to ease of use and the opportunity to quickly scale the architecture when needed. At the same time, cloud infrastructure is very attractive to any attacker, because it gives access to all company’s resources and personal information.

Check out this insightful video on Quality Assurance Tutorial for Beginners: