2018 was a breakthrough year for us!

We have introduced 2 new immersive programs for iOS and Android SDETs!

Here is what we have learned so far from new bootcamps:

• SDET role is not for everyone — coding skills are essential
• Knowledge of platform under test (iOS/Android) is a must
• Only focused and dedicated students get high pay job as SDET within 3 -6 months after bootcamp.
• Without coding algorithms, it is impossible to pass phone screen, so regular practice after the bootcamp is mandatory
• Students who apply newly learned skills at current job, have higher success rate to get promoted or move up to SDET role at different company
• Based on major “shift left’ (testing during development process) movement in software development industry, QA profession had to rapidly adjust.

Here is my personal prediction of what to expect in 2019:

1. Digital transformation with Agile. Testing will shift from release based schedule to pre-merge testing.

Majority of testing will be done within Pull Request branch before feature work or bug fix is merged to mainstream code base.

In context of mobile, more automation would have to be done on native solutions such as Espresso and XCUITest rather than Appium since speed and stability of tests would be come high priority.

2. Combining Manual and Automated Testing.

More and more quality assurance professionals are using a combination of manual and automated testing approaches.

They do it in order to harness the benefits of both as well as to overcome their respective shortcomings.

The manual testing is still dominating the testing industry. Although automated testing brings efficiency to the testing process there are still certain areas such as usability and design which requires manual efforts.

3. Machine Learning in Testing.

ML would be used to identify redundant and unique test cases. Aldo ML would help to identify high-risk areas of the application for the prioritization of regression test cases

4. Increasing adoption of DevOps — the testing team aligns the test design, test automation, and test case development with DevOps to not only verify the code changes but ensure that the changes don’t break the product.

Knowledge of CI/CD for testers becomes a mandatory skill set.

5. Big Data Testing.

Big Data is the high volume of data generated at a high velocity.

Testers have to verify that terabytes of data are successfully processed using commodity cluster and other supportive components.

This type of testing focuses on performance testing and functional testing.

6. Performance Engineering. Performance engineering will replace performance testing in 2019.

Rather than executing performance test scripts, the focus will be on analyzing how all the elements of the system work together.

The various elements of the system include: performance, security, usability, hardware, software, configuration, business value and the customer

Conclusion:

To stay ahead of the curve, the QA professionals’ needs to stay updated on the latest testing trends.

The only way to be immune to the disruptions in the software industry is to prepare for the future.

The above-mentioned software trends will help testers in investing their time and efforts in acquiring the rights skills and tools for 2019.