DEVOPSdigest

Developers and testing professionals intend to speed up build deployment times even further — as 28 percent of those surveyed say they want to deploy hourly (up from 18 percent in 2016) — according to an independent survey, Testing Trends in 2017: A Survey of Software Professionals, conducted by Dimensional Research for Sauce Labs. Last year only 8 percent surveyed said they were not deploying as fast as they wanted to, but that percentage has nearly doubled to 14 percent this year.

Per the survey, teams are deploying builds faster, with 14 percent reporting hourly up from only 10 percent last year.

The survey also revealed a lack of process in fixing bugs once they have been identified. No progress was made at all in the number of development teams that can fix bugs immediately once they are identified, which stayed flat at 23 percent in both 2016 and 2017. Only minor progress (51 percent, up from 48 percent last year) was made in those who fix bugs within a few working days after they are identified.

"Faced with increased market pressure to compete in today’s digital economy — where every business is a software business — it's no surprise that more development teams want to release software faster,” Charles Ramsey, CEO of Sauce Labs concluded. "What is surprising from this report is the revelation that the speed in fixing identified bugs has remained stagnant. There is huge opportunity for teams to leverage automated testing to identify bugs earlier in the release cycle, immediately evaluate the bug with video playback and other assets, and share those test results across teams to fix them as quickly as possible.”

Additional key findings from the report include:

Still Ample Room for Testing to Improve

■ 87 percent use test automation tools, but 42 percent are still mostly or entirely manual testing

■ Some good news for automation with 32 percent being mostly or entirely automated with their testing, up from 26 percent in 2016

■ 74 percent fix bugs within a few working days, up only a tiny amount from 71 percent in 2016

■ Only 1 in 4 report tests are written each time new code is checked in

Decrease in Breadth of Cross Browser Testing

■ Testing on Chrome and Edge increased while testing on all other browsers decreased

■ 49 percent test on only the most recent browser version, up from 27 percent in 2016

Other Trends: Cloud, DevOps, Agile and More

■ 52 percent are using public or private cloud for testing, up from 43 percent in 2015

■ Use of cloud for spillover testing (19 percent up from zero percent) and specific types of tests (54 percent up from nine percent) increases dramatically

■ Only 10 percent have fully embraced DevOps although 73 percent have started down the path and an additional 15 percent are considering it

■ 89 percent have adopted agile in some form but only 32 percent are fully agile

“In the past few years, the way development teams use cloud services for testing has changed dramatically,” said Diane Hagglund, Principal Researcher of Dimensional Research. “Teams are becoming more efficient and prescriptive when it comes to how they are using third party cloud services for testing. The report further shows adoption of Continuous Integration (CI) continues to increase, as development teams invest in new methodologies like CI to meet the demands of today's market needs.”

Survey Methodology: A global database of technology professionals responsible for testing web and mobile applications was emailed an invitation to participate in a Web survey on the topic of testing trends. A total of 732 individuals participated in the survey. Participants included a variety of roles, company sizes, industries and regions. A copy of this report was offered as an incentive for participation. To allow for trend analysis, certain questions were repeated from similar surveys conducted to the same audience in early 2016 and early 2015.