Quality in testing is key and the world is waiting with bated breath for the 2022-2023 World Quality Report by CapGemini and Sogeti. Here are five key messages that we at Inspired Testing rate as the most important from the 2021-2022 report.
QA Teams are now seen as the enablers of quality
The role of quality assurance teams seems to be changing:
“… QA teams are focusing on value, and on avoiding the possibility of defects in the first place…
QA teams are more than the custodians of quality and are its enablers and champions. Enabling or facilitating is dynamic, custodianship is passive.”
In general, the objectives of quality assurance and testing within the various organisations were evenly spread, as seen in Figure 1 below:
Skilled staff is key to Testing Efficiency:
Efficiency is a key quality in testing, and respondents deemed having adequate staff with the right skills crucial to achieving this. Having highly skilled staff on board will also benefit other aspects deemed important to testing efficiency such as communication, test data generation, test design, and shift left. This is echoed in the report on agile and DevOps (see next section) where there is a move away from any particular tool stack toward people with the right skills.
Business priorities top for Successful Agile and DevOps Adoption
When considering the different aspects of successful agile and DevOps adoption, the importance of the underlying technology stack dropped by 16% compared to 2020. In contrast, talent/skill set increased in perceived importance from 34% to 50%.
“Now more than ever, organisations are recognising that the needs of the business are more important than the underlying technology, or the environment, or anything else and that new skills and a new mindset are required.”
Testing is no longer seen as a bottleneck
“Looking across the software development lifecycle, there is a clear sense that testing is no longer seen as an obstacle to progress, but as a factor in its achievement. “
A new test triangle might be emerging
In response to a question about improvement brought about by agile and DevOps, around two-thirds of respondents said they achieved excellent or very good improvements in productivity, quality of software, and cost of quality. Fewer people rated speed to market highly, leading the authors to speculate that a new test triangle might be emerging, made up of quality, cost, and productivity replacing time in one corner.
Quality in Testing: Looking forward
It will be interesting to see the changes reported in the fourteenth edition of the World Quality Report now that the world is adapting post-Covid. As Inspired Testing, we hope that the focus on talent rather than tools continue and that the view of QA as enablers rather than custodians of quality continues to develop.
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