Application Testing is Making a Comeback for Agile DevOps Teams
April 10, 2018

Jim Rapoza
Aberdeen

"Badges? We don't need no stinking badges." In the classic film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, this line was spoken by a group of bandits who clearly didn't need law and order on their side.

Today, one could easily picture a different type of bandit that has been disrupting application development and coding, uttering something very similar.

"Testing? We don't need no stinking testing."

Yep, for a few years now, it has seemed like agile developers and DevOps teams haven't been giving testing its proper due. One could almost picture them thinking, "So what if there's a bug, design flaw or performance issue. We'll fix it in the new version next week."

Of course, this line of thinking has turned out to be a big mistake. Instead of issues getting fixed in next versions, many agile developer groups were simply pushing problems down the line and creating bigger and harder-to-fix issues in the future.

Luckily, it looks like a big about-face is now occurring. Aberdeen research has seen a big spike in interest in the deployment of tools to test application performance, usability, and functionality, especially in the development phase. And we've seen the biggest surge in interest among established enterprises that have already made the move to DevOps and agile development.

Also, our surveys into DevOps and performance management have found that businesses that are leaders in application performance are investing in testing tools that help them optimize development in emerging areas.

For example, with all companies, agile tools are a top area of interest (at 29%), followed by agile software development (24%), and software testing (12%). Aberdeen research has shown that many businesses are adopting agile practices for development and are looking to be more innovative and meet rising customer expectations for applications and services.

Interestingly, when we drill into large enterprises, we see interest in software testing double (to 27%). With many of these large organizations having already adopted agile, it makes sense that they would show increased interest in improving their applications through testing, as our research shows significant costs, both in revenues and in customer satisfaction, from applications with poor performance and usability.

We will continue to research the growth in testing and in all areas of application development and optimization. Given the rapid rate of innovation and change in these areas, it is clear that businesses need every tool at their disposal to stay on top.

In the end, good testing is a kind of badge of quality for applications and services. And that's the kind of badge that even modern coding bandits will need.

Jim Rapoza is Research Director at Aberdeen
Share this

Industry News

April 02, 2025

Kong announced the launch of the latest version of Kong AI Gateway, which introduces new features to provide the AI security and governance guardrails needed to make GenAI and Agentic AI production-ready.

April 02, 2025

Traefik Labs announced significant enhancements to its AI Gateway platform along with new developer tools designed to streamline enterprise AI adoption and API development.

April 02, 2025

Zencoder released its next-generation AI coding and unit testing agents, designed to accelerate software development for professional engineers.

April 02, 2025

Windsurf (formerly Codeium) and Netlify announced a new technology partnership that brings seamless, one-click deployment directly into the developer's integrated development environment (IDE.)

April 02, 2025

Opsera raised $20M in Series B funding.

April 02, 2025

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, is making significant updates to its certification offerings.

April 01, 2025

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, announced the Golden Kubestronaut program, a distinguished recognition for professionals who have demonstrated the highest level of expertise in Kubernetes, cloud native technologies, and Linux administration.

April 01, 2025

Red Hat announced new capabilities and enhancements for Red Hat Developer Hub, Red Hat’s enterprise-grade internal developer portal based on the Backstage project.

April 01, 2025

Platform9 announced that Private Cloud Director Community Edition is generally available.

March 31, 2025

Sonatype expanded support for software development in Rust via the Cargo registry to the entire Sonatype product suite.

March 31, 2025

CloudBolt Software announced its acquisition of StormForge, a provider of machine learning-powered Kubernetes resource optimization.

March 31, 2025

Mirantis announced the k0rdent Application Catalog – with 19 validated infrastructure and software integrations that empower platform engineers to accelerate the delivery of cloud-native and AI workloads wherever the\y need to be deployed.

March 31, 2025

Traefik Labs announced its Kubernetes-native API Management product suite is now available on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace.

March 27, 2025

webAI and MacStadium(link is external) announced a strategic partnership that will revolutionize the deployment of large-scale artificial intelligence models using Apple's cutting-edge silicon technology.

March 27, 2025

Development work on the Linux kernel — the core software that underpins the open source Linux operating system — has a new infrastructure partner in Akamai. The company's cloud computing service and content delivery network (CDN) will support kernel.org, the main distribution system for Linux kernel source code and the primary coordination vehicle for its global developer network.