Evolution of Quality Engineering Services Market During COVID-19 and Beyond

Quality engineering services business during the FY 2019-20 was mainly focused on the adoption of DevOps/DevTestOps/DevSecOps and federated testing.

Industry is going through new and unprecedented experiences like social distancing, no human intervention, low touch service, and resources working from remote locations due to COVID-19. Modern pipelines and data trends will continue shaping continuous testing business in COVID-19 era also. 

In next 3 years, federated testing will evolve into democratized testing and every industry will continue to move towards Automation, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning (ML) & Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Computer Vision and Augmented and Virtual Reality.

Modern pipelines and data trends along with seven-fold objectives are driving our continuous testing business. We are strengthening six areas and the transformation to democratised testing in our continuous testing business.

1. AL/ML in Testing

In 2019, we have applied AI/ML in predicting test quality, prioritizing test cases, classifying defects, scientific risk bases testing, detecting test objects, interacting with applications under tests (AUT), and so on.  We are now investing in integration lab for infusing AI/ML into continuous testing for 6 key reasons explained in figure below:

2. Automation in Shift Left, Shift Right and Spherical Shifting: 

• Codeless test automation enabled by tools that are built on AI technology and visual modelling
• TDD/BDD approach to enable quality engineering at shift left
• Adopting of multi-layered test automation pyramid strategy for Unit, UI, API automation and E2E automation
• Hyper automation to combine the power of tools/platforms with AI/ML, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for AI-driven decision making
• Integration of performance and security testing in pipeline 
• Structured Exploratory testing 
• Automation in Shift right by analysing production data for understanding customer journey, issue and feedback
• Test Data management
• Seamlessly fit quality into the business success criteria or KPIs

Travel and banking customers are ahead in automation and continuous testing adoption as compare to our Insurance customers. We are working with our insurance customer in their moderation projects and developing their transformation journey to adopt continuous testing.

3. IoT and Device Testing

It is expected that the number of connected devices will be more because of COVID so there is the need for an effective device testing strategy. It includes the testing of Operating systems, communication protocols, along with software and hardware of the IoT devices. Continuous testing for vulnerabilities in devices is an emerging business need as IoT typically encompasses all products that are connected to the internet in one way or the other.

4. Cyber Security Testing

Undoubtedly with the digital revolution, there has been the emergence of various security threats. Security Engineering will grow in prominence. Cybersecurity is a much spoken about topic today for the right reasons. Ethical hackers will be much sought after in the industry to help build a safe and secure cyber world. 

5. Cloud Testing

The demand for cloud testing is increasing owing to the capabilities of cloud sourcing technology in software testing activities to perform quality assurance (QA) and to remove bugs.

6. Customer Value based Pricing

Clients have started looking for value-based pricing of services specific to them in COVID era because that’s essentially what it is.