View the report in PDF here: Emerging Technologies
THE EUROPEAN SOFTWARE TESTING BENCHMARK REPORT 2022
PART 1: THE ROLE OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES WITHIN SOFTWARE TESTING
Technology is evolving constantly… One of the challenges – or an opportunity for some – that software testers and IT specialists face is how fast can the tech industry change. Business leaders need to keep track of these trends so as to be productive and deliver growth, digitalisation, and efficiency.
So, what are these emerging technologies, and what is their importance? On the other hand, what constraints their deployment and their future growth in your organisation?
To answer all your questions, we, at TEST Magazine and Software Testing News, are proud to share with you the final results of the first stage of our European Software Testing Benchmark Report 2022 on Emerging Technologies. The Report aims to give you broader insights into the current state of these new technologies within Software Testing and the IT industry, in general.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to participate, we hope you’ll find it insightful!
Testing Professionals & Emerging Technologies
As the world of technology and innovation is moving forward quite rapidly, it is more than necessary to rely on new technologies and on people who know or have learned how to deploy them. Testers, like anyone working in the IT industry, need to face change regularly if they want to deliver quality products and services.
Hence, our analysis is based on the opinions of senior professionals who have been working in IT for a very long time and deal closely with the field of testing. Among those surveyed, a majority work in Testing Management (37%), while others are either in QA (15%), Testing (18%), Project Management (9%), IT Management (12%), or Programming (8%).
What’s definitely striking is that 68% of those respondents have reported that their business is implementing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and the Internet of Things (IoT), while 60% are already personally using these technologies in their jobs.
It is then more than evident that new tech is taking over the industry and that more than half of businesses are prepared to take on the challenge!
The Importance of Emerging Technologies
It would seem that emerging technologies are becoming more and more popular! Out of all those surveyed, a large majority have stated to use them quite repeatedly within their daily work. However, we did notice that around 20% of respondents never use them… whether that is due to complicated implementation or a non-necessity, we will look at this later on in our study.
If we focus on those who do see the value of these technologies, it is vital to notice that almost half of the respondents are using them during Testing, as well as Deployment (21%), Development (16%), Design (10%), and Requirements (5%). It is important to note that many apply emerging technologies during the entire SDLC (software deployment lifecycle) as well as during several phases of the SDLC.
Besides, an overwhelming majority agrees that these technologies are vital for their business and that they would only benefit from implementing them more.
The IT industry seems then to be growing in favour of emerging technologies as they are slowly taking a bigger part in our world.
Challenges of Adoption
As we have noticed earlier in our analysis, almost 20% of IT leaders and managers aren’t using new technologies within their businesses. That might be explained by the complexity and transformations required.
Hence, we have seen that although most respondents are satisfied with the availability and scalability of these technologies, they are still some heavy challenges that constrict their full implementation, including Budget (32%), Manpower (23%), Process (20%), Tools (12%), Culture (9%), and Regulation (4%).
Some respondents have also stated that priority and a lack of IT organisation maturity and of specific skills prevent the efficient implementation of these technologies.
The Future of Emerging Technologies
All in all, it looks like emerging technologies are here to stay, and even more, are only going to be gaining in importance in the near future, as 90% of respondents believe that emerging technologies will be gaining importance in the near future. IT leaders and professionals, especially those working in the Software Testing sector, should at some point think about adopting new tech such as AI, ML, IoT, Cloud, etc. if they want to keep pace with the rapid digital state of the industry.
For this, we found out that the best way to keep up with the latest tech is through social media (24%), Conferences (21%), Professional Groups (16%), Blogs, Academic Research, Magazine (11%), Books, and Product User Groups.
If you are interested in learning more about these technologies, come to our National Software Testing Conference on 8 & 9th June!