One and a half years ago, just over halfway through 2014, we made some predictions about the direction in which the QA testing world was heading. Now it’s time to update these predictions to highlight what we view as the major QA testing trends for the year 2016.
We’re now two months into the year, and the top trends of 2016 are starting to emerge. Below, we’ve listed three QA testing trends that we see developing throughout 2016 and into 2017 as more startups and organizations discover the immense importance of quality assurance.
Mobile QA testing will grow, with a focus on security
In 2016, we expect the percentage of companies that carry out in-depth QA testing for mobile to increase even more. After several high profile security breaches affected major tech companies in 2015, we also expect more companies to focus on the security aspect of mobile app testing.
Since more and more users are browsing the Internet and interacting with apps on their phones, the importance of ironing out bugs for mobile is growing rapidly. Despite this, lots of companies, including startups, are lagging behind when it comes to security.
Research from Gartner, Inc. states that in 2015, “more than 75 percent of mobile applications will fail basic security tests.” Expect to see a significant focus on the security side of testing in 2016 as companies aim to protect themselves and their users from security problems.
More companies will start to use crowdtesting
As testing for mobile becomes more important, it also becomes more important for companies to assess the performance of their app across multiple devices. For startups without the resources to buy and test on hundreds of devices, this makes crowdtesting more important than ever.
Online crowdtesting platforms give mobile application developers access to scale that’s hard, if not impossible, to achieve with local QA testing. Within hours, developers can gain information on their application’s performance and potential issues from thousands of different QA testers.
Thanks to the diverse range of devices and platforms available for testing via crowdtesting, we think more companies will experiment with crowdtesting in 2016 and eventually add it as a key component to their existing QA testing processes.
As of January 2015, approximately 27 percent of companies had already experimented with crowdtesting. Expect to see this number grow throughout 2016 as more companies become aware of the practical and financial benefits of crowdtesting their applications.
QA testing will no longer be just for “big” companies
As the huge success of mobile apps developed by small, independent teams has shown us, going big on mobile isn’t just something that big companies can do. As more small startups enter the mobile space, expect to see many more small teams focus on QA testing.
This trends ties in closely with the growth of crowdtesting mentioned above. With on-demand crowdtesting providing access to actionable bug testing insights at a much lower cost than an in-house quality assurance team, more small startups are likely to make QA a priority.
For independent app developers and startups, this creates the opportunity to compete with far bigger competitors not just to reach the same audience, but to achieve the same high standards of application quality.
Would you like to start QA testing in 2016?
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