Test Automation: Key Challenge in Software Testing
May 02, 2017

Michael Hackett
LogiGear

The software development landscape is a constantly changing one. New tools are introduced regularly. Technologies and knowledge are continuously evolving. Even though quality levels vary greatly across product types, product quality still matters to all, according to a new survey called Testing Essentials, conducted by LogiGear. Unsurprisingly, almost all respondents also want to be up to date and knowledgeable about the latest technologies and tools.


Surprisingly, nearly half of respondents agree that test automation continues to be their biggest challenge because of misunderstandings about the process and needed education about tools at the management level. As test automation gets more and more important in speeding up product release and deployment, teams must re-evaluate how they do things. They should always get outside help. Knowing adoption of new practices or fading on previously accepted practices is essential to improving.

Among the participants of the survey, 40 percent are in traditional software development organizations and represent the financial services, manufacturing software and hardware, as well as the medical and healthcare sectors. Roughly 20 percent of respondents are consultants working across various sectors.

The respondents also shared:

■ Projects are most often behind schedule because of shifting user stories/ requirements, not test delays. It seems the human element is at play here.

■ There appears to be a need to raise the awareness level and knowledge of quality and testing across teams.

■ There is an overall need to resolve issues around automation (i.e., too much pressure to automate due to time demands). Misunderstandings of the time needed to automate well contribute to poor quality, according to our respondents.

■ 67 percent of respondents write test plans based on release or user stories compared to 22 percent that do not write test plans — at all.

■ Good news — only 7% do not document test cases. This is an important number as it shows most respondents do indeed have some manner of documentation in place.

■ Over 54 percent of respondents have test strategies that include only API/integration and UI testing, but no unit testing.

■ More than 65% of respondents say less than 50% of their tests are automated.

■ 26 percent of all respondents have no automated testing at all.

Michael Hackett is Co-Founder and SVP at LogiGear
Share this

Industry News

October 30, 2024

LambdaTest introduced a suite of new features to its AI-powered Test Manager, designed to simplify and enhance the test management experience for software development and QA teams.

October 30, 2024

StackHawk launched Oversight to provide security teams with a birds-eye view of their API security program.

October 30, 2024

DataStax announced the enhancement of its GitHub Copilot extension with its AI Platform-as-a-Service (AI PaaS) solution.

October 30, 2024

Opsera partnered with Databricks to empower software and DevOps engineers to deliver software faster, safer and smarter through AI/ML model deployments and schema rollback capabilities.

October 29, 2024

GitHub announced the next evolution of its Copilot-powered developer platform.

October 29, 2024

Crowdbotics released an extension for GitHub Copilot, available now through the GitHub and Azure Marketplaces.

October 28, 2024

Copado has integrated Copado AI into its Community to streamline support and accelerate issues resolution.

October 28, 2024

Mend.io and HeroDevs have forged a new partnership allowing Mend.io to offer HeroDevs support for deprecated packages.

October 28, 2024

Synechron has acquired Cloobees, a Salesforce implementation partner.

October 24, 2024

Opsera announced its AI Code Assistant Insights.

October 24, 2024

Gearset released its latest innovation for Salesforce DevOps: Dev Sandbox Syncing.

October 23, 2024

Treblle announced the release of Treblle 3.0, its AI-enhanced API intelligence platform.

October 23, 2024

WhiteRabbitNeo released a major new version trained on new cybersecurity and threat intelligence data on the Qwen 2.5 family of models, a top performing software engineering model on HumEval.

October 23, 2024

Contrast Security announced the launch of Contrast One™, a new managed Application Security (AppSec) service.