The 2018 State of Testing Survey Says ...
November 26, 2018

Bria Grangard
SmartBear

Share this

The results from the latest State of Testing Survey by SmartBear were recently released. Designed to establish benchmarks for the software testing industry regarding the methodologies, practices, and tools used by QA professionals, this second-annual, 45-question survey grabbed more than 2,600 responses from various job roles across 16 major industries globally.

Software over the last two decades has revolutionized the way we live. From flip phones and floppy disks, to 3D-video games, pacemakers, and the birth of artificial intelligence-based devices like Alexa, technology has advanced at an unimaginable rate. The rise in what software can accomplish has correlated with a boom in technological dependency. With software having seeped into almost every aspect of day-to-day life, the value and importance of software development and testing has skyrocketed.

The spectrum of practices and tools available to QA professionals is just as broad as the products and tools available in the market — and the goal of this survey was to better understand what is going on in the software testing world today. Here are some of the highlights:

The industry reliance on API testing is growing

This year, 80 percent of respondents reported testing some kind of API or web service, up from 71 percent in 2017. API consumption has skyrocketed over the past few years, a growth that is not surprising and will continue. As the connective-tissue of application development, APIs are the key to connecting the vast network of systems, platforms, and apps that make up the Internet of Things (IoT). To ensure a flawless user experience, it is crucial to test APIs within the context of their consumption across multiple browsers, devices, and resolutions.

The role of testing continues to expand beyond the traditional tester

With the importance of testing having grown exponentially in recent years, the survey audience spends more than 40 percent of their week testing with QA engineers spending 75 percent of their time at it. Developers reported spending 40 percent of their week testing, proving that teams are indeed shifting left.

Automation is not growing as fast as we might expect

It's been widely acknowledged across the industry that automated testing is essential for teams looking to adopt more iterative development cycles and to release faster. But while it feels that automation is picking up steam, it's not growing as quickly as the industry might expect. The use of automated API testing grew from 49 percent in 2017 to 54 percent in 2018.

API testing is increasing

API testing is increasing with third party API usage having grown by more than double in the last year. The breakdown of types of APIs tested has drastically shifted year-over year. More developers and testers are testing third party and external facing APIs, rather than just the internal APIs that make their application functional in a SOA or Microservice Architecture. Using third party APIs for testing can be notoriously expensive and difficult, as API providers can charge teams each time they use the API.

One quarter of teams are releasing software at least once per day or multiple times per day

Fifteen percent of respondents reported releasing multiple times a day, as compared to 6 percent in 2017. A higher percentage of individuals also reported releasing on a daily and weekly basis in 2018 than in 2017.

The survey is filled with many key insights including emerging trends and year-over-year analysis of what teams are doing, and what teams globally are thinking the future of testing will hold. Discover more of what your peers are doing today in testing.

Bria Grangard is Product Marketing Manager at SmartBear
Share this

The Latest

September 27, 2023

Navigating observability pricing models can be compared to solving a perplexing puzzle which includes financial variables and contractual intricacies. Predicting all potential costs in advance becomes an elusive endeavor, exemplified by a recent eye-popping $65 million observability bill ...

September 26, 2023

Generative AI may be a great tool for the enterprise to help drive further innovation and meaningful work, but it also runs the risk of generating massive amounts of spam that will counteract its intended benefits. From increased AI spam bots to data maintenance due to large volumes of outputs, enterprise AI applications can create a cascade of issues that end up detracting from productivity gains ...

September 25, 2023

A long-running study of DevOps practices ... suggests that any historical gains in MTTR reduction have now plateaued. For years now, the time it takes to restore services has stayed about the same: less than a day for high performers but up to a week for middle-tier teams and up to a month for laggards. The fact that progress is flat despite big investments in people, tools and automation is a cause for concern ...

September 21, 2023

Companies implementing observability benefit from increased operational efficiency, faster innovation, and better business outcomes overall, according to 2023 IT Trends Report: Lessons From Observability Leaders, a report from SolarWinds ...

September 20, 2023

IT leaders are driving an increasing number of automation initiatives as a way to stay competitive, reduce costs and scale as they navigate an unpredictable social and economic environment, according to the 2023 State of Automation in IT survey conducted by Jitterbit ...

September 19, 2023

Customer loyalty is changing as retailers get increasingly competitive. More than 75% of consumers say they would end business with a company after a single bad customer experience. This means that just one price discrepancy, inventory mishap or checkout issue in a physical or digital store, could have customers running out to the next store that can provide them with better service. Retailers must be able to predict business outages in advance, and act proactively before an incident occurs, impacting customer experience ...

September 18, 2023
Digital transformation is key to ensuring companies keep up with the competitive market landscape. Putting digital at the core of a business can significantly reduce operating expenses and inefficiencies. However, this process often means changing the way internal teams work with one another. To help with the transition, this blog offers chief experience officers (CXOs) advice on how to lead a successful digital transformation project ...
September 14, 2023

Earlier this year, New Relic conducted a study on observability ... The 2023 Observability Forecast reveals observability's impact on the lives of technical professionals and businesses' bottom lines. Here are 10 key takeaways from the forecast ...

September 13, 2023
On September 10, MGM Resorts experienced what it called a "cybersecurity issue" that had a major impact on the company's systems, showing how cyberattacks can bring down applications, ultimately causing problems for a company in many ways ...
September 12, 2023

Only 33% of executives are "very confident" in their ability to operate in a public cloud environment, according to the 2023 State of CloudOps report from NetApp. This represents an increase from 2022 when only 21% reported feeling very confident ...