What is the real state of testing?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What is the State of Testing?

  • The Real State of Testing
  • What is Changing in Testing?
  • The Real Final Note
  • Closing Thoughts

What is the State of Testing?

PractiTest has been publishing a State of Testing report for 12 years. The latest version appeared in mid-January 2025. The last section of the report is called Final Note. It states several points. Here are the ones I find most interesting:

• The report reveals a dynamic and evolving landscape for software testing professionals.
• QA teams are growing larger in many organizations, while also becoming more reliant on automation, cross-functional collaboration, and the early adoption of AI tools.
• Testers are increasingly advocating for more influence in the development process and a greater emphasis on the value they bring to the organization.
• The report emphasizes the need for organizations to invest in training and upskilling to fully leverage new technologies.
• The survey also reveals a growing uncertainty among testers about their career paths in a rapidly changing industry, making it essential for organizations to offer clear career progression and reskilling opportunities.

As you can probably guess, I disagree with some of the report's sentiments. I even shared the report internally, and after reading it, one team member said, “The state of testing is pretty dismal.”

The Real State of Testing

Instead of a dynamic and evolving field, we see a stagnant career. The need for change is urgent. People are trying to find what it means to be a testing professional. They are still struggling with the same challenges. You can see what we mean in the report very easily. The report has sections called “Changes we’d like to see.” They seem to be direct quotes from some of the survey participants. The following is an example of one of these sections:

• “I’d like to see greater recognition of the value testers bring to the development process, with an emphasis on their contributions being equally important to those of developers or product teams.”
• “Testers should be involved earlier in the software development lifecycle, allowing us to contribute to test case creation and quality discussions during development.”
• “Less emphasis on rushing to release and more focus on improving code quality and refactoring would allow for more thorough testing.”
• “A move away from rigid metrics and toward more meaningful ones, such as those that capture risk mitigation and customer satisfaction, would better demonstrate QA’s value.”

While reading this section, I experienced a feeling of déjà vu (the sense that you have experienced something before). It brought me back 20 years when I became Director of Quality Assurance at Ultimate Software. I met with everyone on the team and asked them about their challenges. All four themes in this report came up. Is that a dynamic field? It sounds more like a field that still struggles with the same issues it struggled with decades ago.

What is Changing in Testing?

Is there something different in testing? Two significant trends occurred, but they happened to the testing world, not because of the testing world. Let’s take a look at another “Changes we’d like to see” section from the report:

• “Dedicated time and resources for learning new tools and methodologies, especially around automation and AI, would help bridge skill gaps.”
• “Opportunities to develop technical skills like coding, API testing, and automation should be made more accessible.”

Two significant trends have occurred in the last twenty years: Agile software development (plus associated spinoffs like DevOps) and cloud-based architectures. These trends have changed the software development landscape. Add to that the emergence of AI/ML, and you will have the basis for the inevitable dismal state of testing.

Agile changed the testing process, and new technologies requiring new skills continue to emerge. In the meantime, testers seem oblivious to what is happening around them. They are still fighting the same fights as 20 years ago. The world is moving quickly in a specific direction, while the testing community stands still, facing the same challenges it has had for decades.

Unsurprisingly, the Final Note section includes this sentence: the survey also reveals a growing uncertainty among testers about their career paths in a rapidly changing industry, making it essential for organizations to offer clear career progression and reskilling opportunities.

While the report's authors try to portray testing as a “dynamic and evolving” field, the actual final note will read very differently. Here is my version of the final note:

The Real Final Note

While the software development world continues to change and evolve, the testing community faces the same issues as 20 years ago. The testing community asks for recognition of its value to the business, but never asks why that business does not see its value. The testing community needs to start asking some basic questions, such as: Can we better explain what we do? Is something missing in our work that causes the business to regard our work as less valuable?

Instead, the testing community insists that businesses provide testers with the necessary time and training to address skill gaps. If businesses think testers offer less value than developers and product managers, why would they invest more in them?

Following the Agile software development revolution, developers transformed testing forever, leaving the testing community behind and leaving QA teams uncertain about their futures. The emergence of AI/ML poses the next big challenge to the testing world. Since testers never successfully figured out their place in the new Agile world, this latest trend can represent a seismic shift in the testing world.

Five of the Seven Big Tech companies have removed or retired their testing roles for software teams. If this trend of Testing without Testers spreads to smaller companies, the impact on the testing community could be catastrophic.

As long as the testing community does not accept that testing is broken and they share considerable responsibility for its state, the QA community will continue to be disrupted by outside forces until most of it becomes as obsolete as film projectionists.

Closing Thoughts

Our note was probably a little harsh, especially the line about the film projectionist. Still, the testing community needs to wake up and face reality. At Testaify, we see three essential problems:

• Designing effective test cases is complicated and time-consuming. Most testers do not know half of the software testing techniques. The testing community continues to ignore this problem and treat it as a minor training issue. Some thought leaders overlook the fact that mastering software testing techniques requires consistent practice and coaching.
• Human-generated test automation wastes time and money. This report indicates that 53% of QA teams have implemented automation to replace less than 25% of their manual testing. That means most QA teams get little value from their test automation investment. Only 21% have replaced 75% or more of their manual testing work. The 21% with 75% or more has remained unchanged for the last three years.
• QA teams continue to do a poor job of providing a comprehensive view of the product quality, mainly because most of them do not have a comprehensive testing strategy covering all four quadrants of Brian Marick’s test matrix. Significant gaps continue to exist. If your team cannot get to 75% functional test automation, they are likely doing very little regarding performance, security, and usability testing.

These challenges are the reason behind Testaify. Our product aims to provide answers to each one. The future of autonomous testing is here!