Seite - 200 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

200 K. van Dam Software testinghascomealongway,but rightnowdevelopmentsin thisfieldof work are gaining momentum. Things are changing. Fast. And the people involved need to change along with it or be left behind. Most testing professionals we see today are nothing like the software testers from back in 1998. A question however could be: aren’t we changing too fast? Aren’t we forgetting the things we learned during the last 20years (andbefore that)? Today test automation may very well be the most sought after expertise when it comes to quality assurance in software development. Software development is all about continuously producing sufficient quality software. Time is everything, we want to release new functionality as soon as possible without being hindered by exhaustive manual testing. Therefore test automation is the only way to go. However, as some people may have thought for a while, tooling will not replace the software tester entirely. Simply because tooling isn’t able to test software at all, it can just execute certain pre-programmedcheckson the software. Thismeans it’s still up to a specialist to come up with the right test cases (and then decide if they should be automated or not). For software testers this means they should shift their attention from just software testing (e.g. TMap) to a much broader area. They should know about automation, tools and frameworks. But they should also keep a focus on their (testing) skills, including soft skills. Instead of following some testing technique out of a book, a software tester today should possess a certain mindset in which they understand people, product and process (P3). And besidesjust lookingatfunctionalitytestersareoftenexpectedtokeepaneyeonnon- functional requirements like performance,securityand reliability aswell. The shift from waterfall to agile software development has had a major impact on everyone involved with IT; however, it may have had the biggest effect on software testers. AndI think this is just gettingstarted . . . 4 TheFuture 2028 Let’s just try and predict the future. At least, when it comes to software testing. Continuing with 10-year jumps we go to 2028. If we take a look at the origin of software testing and how it has developed the last few decades, than where do we expect the expertise to go next? From what mistakes have we learned?What things will we still bedoing in2028?Whatwill probablychange? One thing is certain: We cannot predict the future accurately but we can be pretty sure that a software tester 10 years from now will still have to be flexible. During the last few decadessoftware testershave changedfrombeinga bit of rigid personalities who required to be independent on their own little testing island into possibly themostflexiblepeopleparticipatinginanyITproject. It’soften the tester who makes the connection between businesspeople and IT people. It’s often the softwaretesterwhostartsworkingtogetherwithbusinessanalyststochangetheway