Automated Split Testing

Brief Review Of 2009 Software Testing Trends

January 12th, 2011

As 2009 comes to a close, it can be hard to remember just how much software has changed in the span of 12 months. It happens so fast and by the year’s end projects are entirely new and different, especially with the new SOA and Saas technologies. Here is a brief review of some of the 2009 software trends and developments.

Testing in either an agile software or extreme programming environment can be vastly different to the more traditional split team approaches. Where there used to be a line between development and testing, these newer approaches integrate the work of developing and testing into the development process. It does not eliminate formal end testing; it simply provides the developer time in the process to frequently test the application’s progress. Instead of waiting for full product development, the software is tested in units ensuring that each new part runs smoothly with other portions. These methods can increase the time to develop functional software, but the number of bugs in the final product is significantly reduced. While this is not a new concept, it has gained a considerable amount of popularity because of the increasing demand for variations on software. With numerous requests with similar specs, it is more efficient to provide units for testing that can be easily incorporated into other projects.

With the perceived efficiency of automated testing, it is also in an upward trend. Although it has been around for a while and the complexity involved in the script limit its usefulness, well written automated testing can nearly eliminate repetitive testing. This type of testing (for both code-driven and GUI testing) works particularly well with thee agile software and extreme programming environments. With the reduction in the amount of code tested and the reuse of those chunks in multiple programs, automated testing has a lot of appeal for helping clean up multi-purpose code faster. Software test automation services are popular today than ever before.

Crowdsourced testing has been a different type approach to software testing for a couple of years, and with the current global economy it continues to be a method of interest, or even paranoia. Essentially, this method is like an auction, with the unsolved problem as the object for bidding and the ideas of how to solve as the currency. The company, group, or individual post the problem online with a call for solutions. People then post potential fixes to the site and the crowdsourcer decides which solution best resolves the issue. Depending on the terms and conditions, the winning bidder receives compensation and loses rights to the solution. This method has several inherent flaws, such as providing a solution without being able to test the problem and lack of interaction between the “tester” and developer. Crowdsourced testing does have the unique advantage of giving the public an idea of what is to come and getting feedback unrelated to the problem that may improve the product.

Vanessa Richie is a professional copywriter of A1QA software testing company, Texas.A1QA provides a wide range of standalone and web application testing services: software testing automation, software functional testing, regression testing, performance stress testing, etc.
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Brief Review Of 2009 Software Testing Trends