The Changing Software

Testing Ecosystem and

Its Impact on Product

Quality, the Market and

the Economy

Copyright QA InfoTech 2011

Agenda

• The Changing Software Testing Ecosystem

• Impact on Product Quality

• Impact on the Market

• Impact on the Economy

• What’s Next

The Changing Software Testing Ecosystem

• Quality moving upstream

• Collective ownership of product quality

• Tighter integration between test team and the rest of the product development team

• Tolerance for poor quality is lower than ever in the market

• Need for test community to:

— Understand technology and competing products

— Creatively emulate end-user scenarios

— Mimic user environments via lab and simulations

— Consider global product distribution effects

• Increasing objectivity built into product quality

Impact on Product Quality

• A minimum quality bar imposed on products to enter the market

• Product to be of “ultra-superior quality” to gain and retain brand

loyalty

• Customers demand:

— Faster time-to-market

— Products that accommodate dynamic requirements

— Competitive products

— Rich feature sets

— Flawless performance

Impact on Product Quality (continued)

• Product quality improving due to holistic rather than isolated testing

— Increasing use of test-optimization plans

— Use of meaningful test metrics yielding predictable results

— Increasing adoption of customer-centric/role-based testing including usability testing, performance testing

— Proactive contributions to product richness and quality

— True validation/quality assurance as opposed to verification/quality control

— Improving test process efficiency

Educating developers on core processes to improve build quality

Better understanding of system architecture results in finding more valid bugs and less time spent on defect management

Impact on the Market

• “Software Monopolization” becoming extinct; evolving market of

“Survival of the Fittest”

• Software-testing related business partnerships and alliances on the

rise

• Software usage is now an enriching and global experience

• Greater need for domain expertise

• More opportunities for software test outsourcing

• Tighter integration in the user community

Impact on the EconomyFrom Product Development Cost and Total Cost of Quality Angles

• Improved Return on Investment (ROI) on products

• Reduced Total Cost of Quality (COQ) and overall product cost— Cheaper to fix bugs found early-on in product lifecycle

— Increase in percentage of valid defects filed, due to better product understanding, tighter develop-test interaction

— Cannot ignore increase in test-effort costs

— Need for strong test management to effectively use test budget to reap desired benefits

Before Coding Coding Test Post ShipExpected Cost to Fix 1 unit 6.5 units 15 units 60-100 units

Source: Software Engineering, A Practitioner’s Approach, Pressman, Roger S.

Impact on the Economy (continued)

From Job Market and Associated Monetization Angles

• Greater respect for testing as a profession— Varied high paying test roles evolving: Test Analyst, Test Architect, Specialized testers such as performance testers, security testers

• Dedicated test budget guaranteeing more test jobs

• Part-time test jobs for specialized areas – e.g. linguistic testing, usability testing

• More money in circulation due to thriving supplemental businesses – e.g. labs, tool

vendors, storage vendors

• Proactive quality-improvement tasks taken on outside of product-development lifecycle— Necessitates need for core test-team all through the year

What’s Next

• Core Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – a minimum

requirement— Product quality and performance SLAs

— Cost SLAs

— Test effort productivity SLAs

• Increase in tester-user interaction

• Increasing respect for the test profession— Shrinking deltas between developer and tester salaries

• Increase in testing needs will keep the market and economy

thriving

Thank You

For more information, please:

• Contact us at info@qainfotech.com

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Key Takeaways

1960s 1990s 2000 Current

Timeline

Ev

olu

tio

n

of

So

ftw

are

Tes

tin

g

Software testing for core products

Software testing for all products,

but no independent testing

Independent testing emerges;

largely black box

True independent testing emerges

Software testing has evolved immensely over the last 50 years, especially in the last two

decades

• Better and earlier testing has impacted product quality in a very positive way

• Software testing is gaining additional respect and creating several market

opportunities including jobs

• A product or services company will need to invest in testing R&D, training and

process improvements to stay competitive

• The evolution of the software testing ecosystem has created a win-win situation for

product companies and end-users

Key Takeaways (continued)