A global study carried out by CA Technologies revealed that 75% of organisations highlight continuous testing as important or critical, although only a small amount of survey respondents made progress acquiring the necessary knowledge and key enablers to drive digital transformation.
Resulting in a more desirable return on continuous delivery investments, 20% of continuous testing ‘leaders’ said they enjoy improvement on software delivery speed, efficiency and quality.
While 90% of survey participants described testing automation as critical, only 20% said they reached a high quality of test automation coverage, leaving 80% of respondents heavily dependant on manual processes.
From the generation of test cases, test execution and important activities such as safe, fast and efficient test data management, most respondents attributed challenges to the shortage of automation in almost every test process and tooling aspect.
‘Continuous delivery optimises effective integration’
Although according to 63% of respondents, it is the combination of continuous delivery and agile development that optimises the effective integration of activities throughout the whole software development lifecycle, with executives highlighting the importance of modern methodologies like deploying DevOps, continuous delivery and agile development.
Jeff Scheaffer, General Manager for Continuous Delivery at CA Technologies, said: “As organisations build their modern software factories, it is important not to sacrifice quality in the quest for ever greater speed and efficiency in business growth and success.
“Software quality and testing is becoming everyone’s responsibility and it is incumbent that business and IT management ensure everyone is appropriately enabled – business analysts, developers, release managers and operations professionals all played role in the quality chain.”
The study concluded a balanced approach of both tooling and modern practices, reshaping how software is developed and supports business transformation globally across industries, although safeguarding personal data across development and testing environments would make business transformation easier.
Written by Leah Alger
