Stay Tuned: Testing Trends on Top in 2019

Christmas carols blare across the city and remind us that festive season is right around the corner! We dive into a fun holiday rush wondering how quickly 2018 has come to an end. Looking to 2019, its high time to figure out the major trends QA industry prepared for us. What automation tools will be in demand in the upcoming year? Which manual software testing strategies will remain among top-popular? Let`s find the answers.

The world of manual testing and QA automation gains popularity in the organizations with each passing day. Automation remains a time-consuming, useful, and has all chances to make the QA process much easier. However, it doesn`t replace tester`s professionalism, teamwork, and constant feedback from QA engineers. In 2019, manual testing saves its benefits and continues developing.

Have a look at the top list of 2019 QA tools:

1. Application Programming Interfaces (API testing automation)

API test ensures that services and applications are ready to use. It aims to determine whether the developed APIs meet the requirements of performance, functionality, reliability, and application security. Poorly implemented APIs frequently cause software failure and negative end-user experiences.

Today, most of the automated tests help in UI quality assurance. Besides, developers work on API and service testings on their own. In some cases, QA engineers conduct manual API testing.

According to Google Trends, API services` popularity has been growing since 2016. An automated API testing strategy increases project speed delivery, as more tests can be easily performed within a short period, regardless of software updates. The use of API automation tools prevents human error cases. Such tests can be implemented at the development stage and run through the deployment and monitoring phases.

2. Open Source Tools

A rapid shift to open source test automation is evident among developers and QA specialists. Free open source tools enable to design and easily choose a range of framework combinations. These tools provide a more powerful integration of automation into mobile and website testing process.

3. Codeless Testing

Codeless testing enables to create automatic tests without having to write a piece of code. This approach is constantly evolving with innovations in technology, paying more attention to reduced coding process and increasing its convenience for the user. The ultimate goal of codeless testing is to make the automation of a test script time-consuming. In such a way, automation requires almost no efforts to write code.

4. Automated Testing for IoT Applications

According to the World Quality Report, 83% of respondents used IoT products in 2017. In 2018, the percentage increased by 97%. By 2019, two-thirds of consumers are expected to use connected technology products for their homes. Such growing demand requires applying new strategies for quick and effective IoT application testing. However, IoT products generate large-volume user data and, therefore, impose particular challenges for QA specialists. That is why automated testing is rather a necessity than an option in this case. The main goal of automation in IoT testing is to provide a background for fast software delivery.
Moreover, IoT quality assurance will not be limited to functional testing. QA engineers will have to ensure if the product is reliable and in-demand among the users under various circumstances.

5. Load Testing

Although load testing is not an innovative approach in QA, chances are it remains among top software testing trends of 2019. Internet Live Stats has counted nearly 200 million active websites in the world wide web in 2018. It might be challenging to keep up with the greatest under such huge competition in the forthcoming year. Remember, your customers are the most reliable in evaluating your website performance. If load testing is overlooked, the audience gives negative reviews and challenges brand reputation. Contemporary users are impatient to slow, low-quality websites. Load testing helps to detect where and when the system crashes, to prevent users` bad experience, and to avoid revenue loss.
Moreover, big music fests, sports events, Black Friday are often about sales and enormous traffic spikes. QA engineers incorporate different types of load testing to ensure your software reacts correctly on irregular traffic patterns.

6. Mobile Testing

Probably, your website mobile adaptation or app has more sales and traffic compared to the desktop version. No wonder, since the number of smartphone users is growing and is expected to reach 4,48 billion by 2019. People use smartphones to perform the activities they used to do via PC. The modern mobile app market is diverse not only by the users` needs but also by software structure. That means that mobile app development and QA will also remain in high demand. To keep up with constant application updates, fast automated testing of mobile applications will be a beneficial solution. The combination of such open source tools as Selenium & Appium has all chances to become one of the most popular in 2019.

As the large variety of services is delivered through apps today, testing of mobile payment is also among 2019 QA trends. A digital wallet is a convenience of the 21st century, and people have become more dependent on mobile transactions. Therefore, user experience with mobile adaptation will be the crucial aspect to check before website release.

7. Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Not long ago, the phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence was a part of fiction movie scenario rather than reality. Today, AI is present in the applications related to machine learning, natural language processing, cognitive and robotics automation. For instance, machine learning can be applied in the banking sphere to model continuous financial transactions. Moreover, the combination of machine learning and AI is a powerful force in preventing online banking fraud. Of course, such advanced components must be tested. The World Quality Report 2018-2019 says that modern organizations are open to business experiments developed by AI. It indicates that the companies` IT departments spend nearly 22% of their budgets on AI projects. QA engineers are likely to adopt AI across the whole testing lifecycle, over the next two years. The experts of World Quality Report expect to apply AI technologies from the requirements stage, through major QA operations, to testing customer experience. Although it`s not fully clear in what business applications AI can be used, we can look forward to some interesting project experiments ahead.

8. A Happy Medium

No need to think about the eternal “automated-vs-manual QA” question in 2019. Neither of these methods is better. More and more quality assurance engineers build a combined strategy that contains both automated and manual testing approaches. When testers adopt multiple benefits and take into account drawbacks of these approaches, they conduct a complex, professional software quality assurance. Solid automation brings about efficiency in the whole testing process. But manual testing remains less costly and more helpful in UI quality assurance. If you are to implement a combined QA strategy in your project, think of its budget, deadline, and team`s skillset. Thus, looking for a QA team to test your software, choose the one that offers a combined strategy. In such a way, you will reap the advantages of both methods.

The year 2019 seems to bring a range of advanced methods in the QA industry. At the same time, 2019 challenges QA engineers with the growing risks of advances in the technical domain. But there is nothing we can`t handle! Testers will knock the hurdles down thank to teamwork, deep research, and non-standard approaches to QA engineering.
Meanwhile, we are going to relax, party, and recall all the goods we had together in 2018.