Software testing in the future - Interview with Robin Van

Robin Van is a Quality Specialist at OTTO. His focus is on orchestrating quality assurance in an agile environment with a large number of development teams. He also deals with the special features of quality assurance in app development.

What challenges will software testing have to face in the future?

An increasingly fast-paced working environment with practices such as continuous integration and delivery require a high degree of automation in quality assurance. Software testing continues to evolve into a more complex and technical task environment. An app-first approach adds further complexity factors such as device diversity and the influencing factors of mobile use of the software product. In order to meet these challenges, the understanding of quality within the company and the development teams should be brought to a uniform level.

What ideas or solutions could address these challenges?

To ensure that quality assurance is integrated into the development process as early as possible, the understanding of quality should be standardized and made prominent throughout the entire sphere of activity by competent quality managers. Due to the high number of releases associated with CD, it is essential that software quality is a team value and is equally accepted by everyone. In order to achieve this, quality managers with strong communication skills are needed who, for example, raise the flag for quality standards through coaching and intensive communication and drive development in this area.

What does future testing look like? How will we test?

Testing still takes place in all phases of software development in order to detect weaknesses as early as possible. A quality manager takes on the role of quality coach in order to anchor software quality as a team value. Ultimately, the team is holistically responsible for software quality and takes on the quality assurance tasks together. With regard to the complexity factors of an app-first strategy in combination with CD, modern testing approaches such as crowdtesting should be considered. Software testing will only be one part of the demanding discipline of quality management.

How can testers and test managers prepare for this today?

It is also crucial that testers and test managers continue to train themselves and do not get comfortable in their daily routine. Furthermore, all testers should be aware that testing not only concerns the software itself, but also user stories and processes that need to be questioned and optimized. It is becoming increasingly important to move away from simple, automatable tasks and focus on more complex problems. The future does not belong to the testers but to the quality managers and you should be prepared for this.