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Follow UsWhat are the current challenges in
software testing?
One of the main concerns today is that software
testing is viewed at by organizations as a tactical approach,
not as a strategic approach. This needs to change. There is
a need to educate about why testing should be considered
in the form of a strategy and customers must be convinced
about this. Secondly, interruptions which are caused due to
software testing often have an impact on the release dates.
This is a major challenge since there are time-to-market
constraints. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep
pace with evolving technologies.
What developments are expected to
take place in 2013?
There will be new developments in the ï¬elds of business
analytics, business intelligence, data warehousing, etc.
As a consequence, data quality-related testing will gain
importance, where you will evaluate whether the data
at hand is suitable for any meaningful analysis. There
will also be lots of ambiguities as regards the expected
behavior of the software. Many requirements will be
considered by the customer as being too obvious to be
speciï¬ed in writing. More and more software is being
hosted in the cloud and hence SaaS testing will come up as a phenomenon. There will also be focus on masking errors
caused by crashes, outages, downtime, etc because this
affects user satisfaction.
Please comment on the change in the testing process because of the
widespread emergence of `apps' for mobile phones and tablets which is
driving consumerization of IT.
Mobility has changed the user's requirements. The user
has become demanding. The functionality available on
mobile devices is more now than ever. Domain knowledge
is essential when you are doing testing and with mobile
apps, usability becomes a prime concern. Agile as a
method of development is gaining importance because of
the fast-paced changes in this area.
Do you notice any change in the end-user's perception of what defines
quality (in software)?
Users now also consider whether (or how closely) does the
developed software meet unstated requirements. This has
begun to affect their perception of quality. In addition to
usability, users now also expect that their software should
work in a uniform manner across all 3 screens, i.e. the PC,
the tablet and the phone. Integration with online services
which are very popular has become a very important
parameter in judging software quality. This is not an easy
task for developers. They have to tinker with constantly
changing APIs and also lots of regression testing needs to
be done.
What is your opinion on manual v/s automated testing in 2013?
Both will be required. Manual testing won't go away
yet. It cannot be replaced in it's entirety. Initial cycles of
the testing process have to be manual only, they cannot
be automated. Also, there are certain types of testing
that have to be inherently manual. For example, while
performance/stress/load testing can be automated,
usability testing has no automated way and it requires a
human to evaluate a software's usability!