The transformation of traditional testing towards Agile[1] quality management is accelerating to support value delivery to customers and end users.
The 15th edition of the World Quality Report, published today by
The report highlights that with high customer expectations, interoperability demands, regulations, evolving guidelines, and cybersecurity risks, testing now requires an approach that is more rigorous and agile than ever before. The trend of hyper-personalization is also adding to the complexity, as it demands exhaustive testing. Quality Assurance (QA) is therefore evolving from a pure testing scope to broader Quality Engineering (QE), which focuses on delivering value over volume to enable customer experiences, brand protection, and business outcomes. This shift requires a re-focus onto the end-to-end customer journey and collaboration with business teams.
The use of AI is on the rise in Quality Engineering, but an incremental approach is key
Trends in the use of AI to deliver quality outcomes are moving fast. Organizations cite for the first time, higher productivity as the primary outcome driven by AI (65%). Generative AI will make possible increased productivity and velocity, leading to more frequent deployments with a higher quality customer experience.
Respondents reported that using AI to improve the reliability of tests (33%) and reduce the number of defects (29%) was no longer their primary focus. This indicates a shift in the testing philosophy, with an increased tolerance for defects as long as they can be fixed quickly and efficiently. Continuous testing, inherent in Agile and DevOps4 practices across organizations, has accelerated this trend.
However, concerns related to security, privacy, and biased outcomes still need to be addressed, with 31% remaining skeptical about the value of AI in QA, emphasizing the importance of an incremental approach.
Mark Buenen, Global Leader, Quality Engineering and Testing at the
'Quality Engineering is changing, and AI is one of the driving forces for this transformation. AI offers endless possibilities and opens the door to smarter DevOps, including quality assurance,' said
Quality Engineering's active role within sustainable IT
This year's edition of the report also confirmed sustainable IT as an increasing interest area for quality teams. The vast majority (97%) think that QE is an active element in driving the sustainability agenda in their organization and over half (55%) highlighted benefits on the environmental aspect of sustainable IT.
However, for most respondents (63%), the priority over the next 12 months remains understanding how to monitor and report on green metrics within their QE testing processes.
The rise of Agile quality management
To keep up with the fast-paced digital environment, 70% of organizations cited that they are valuing a central
Notably, respondents are prioritizing development skills for quality engineers, such as SQL/Python/C#/ava (42%) and CI/CD (39%), over traditional testing skills like automation (28%) and performance tooling (24%).
Despite the rise in quality automation, the report acknowledges persistent challenges, with an average of 27% of organizations still grappling with legacy systems and the fast-changing application landscape.
The report and additional information are available here.
World Quality Report 2023 research methodology
The World Quality Report is the only global report analyzing application quality and testing trends. It has been produced annually since 2009. This year's edition has tracked and examined the most important trends and developments in Quality Engineering and Testing by surveying more than 1,750 senior executives across 32 countries and 10 sectors. The expert findings are complemented with commentary, examples and best practices from senior executives from various fortune 500 organizations, that participated in deep-dive interviews around these topics.
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1. In software development, Agile practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/end user(s), adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, continual improvement, and flexible responses to changes in requirements, capacity, and understanding of the problems to be solved. It aims to provide better responsiveness to changing business needs.
2. Part of theCapgemini Group ,Sogeti makes business value through technology for organizations that need to implement innovation at speed and want a local partner with global scale. With a hands-on culture and close proximity to its clients,Sogeti implements solutions that will help organizations work faster, better, and smarter. By combining its agility and speed of implementation through a DevOps approach,Sogeti delivers innovative solutions in Quality Engineering, cloud and application development, all driven by AI, data and automation.
3. Quality Engineering spans the entire product lifecycle, not just the software development process.
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