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Creating, executing, and maintaining reliable tests has never been easier.
The last 12 months were a busy time in the world of software testing and software development! From the continuing rise of generative AI, to ongoing readjustments from 2020, to the ongoing pressure to improve deployment frequency and the customer experience, development organizations witnessed significant changes in the past year.
These competing (and sometimes seemingly conflicting) trends are reflected in mabl’s most-read blogs. Spanning everything from best practices for using AI in software testing to our introduction of low-code performance testing in May, the quality community explored critical topics in pursuit of building better software.
Top Software Testing Trends
The topics that dominated 2023 reflect the growing role of software testing across the enterprise and give a preview of the changes to come. Quality professionals investigated how to unlock DevOps success, test automation strategies to improve the customer experience, and more in their quest to expand the reach of testing across the enterprise, trends that will likely continue to grow in 2024.
Learn New QA Skills with Mabl University's Non-Functional Testing Certification
Mabl University offers learning resources to everyone in the software testing community, including mabl users, those enrolled in a free trial, and those simply interested in expanding their skills. Like the Foundations and Advanced Certifications, the mabl University Non-Functional Skills Certification allows learners to showcase their automated testing knowledge. Even if their team hasn’t started using API testing, API load testing, or automated accessibility checks in mabl, quality professionals can earn the Non-Functional Skills Certificate.
This program offers self-paced recommended learning paths and skills assessments that cover automated API testing, API load testing, and accessibility testing. Mabl U students will learn the fundamentals of each test type through low-code test automation, the value of each automated test type, and how they can showcase their impact with in-depth reports.
Learn more about mabl University’s Non-Functional Skills Certification.
Improve Test Coverage Across Entire Customer Journey with Automated End-to-End Testing
End-to-end testing is an essential part of any automated testing strategy. But E2E tests that capture the full customer journey across multiple platforms, apps, and APIs are too time-consuming for many fast-moving software development teams. Avoiding flaky tests, keeping up with test maintenance, and identifying the root cause of failure are all more challenging with comprehensive end-to-end tests.
But AI-backed test automation tools and cloud-based testing are helping QA professionals overcome these obstacles to comprehensive end-to-end tests, giving development organizations a powerful tool for understanding how changes will impact their users. With the right test automation solution, end-to-end testing becomes an adaptable process that can continuously evolve to match real customer needs. A few examples include automated accessibility checks, integrated API tests, shadow DOM components, and cross browser testing.
Mabl Recognized as 4-Time Best AI-Based Solution For Engineering
In June, mabl was named a Best AI-based Solution for Engineering by the annual AI Breakthrough Awards program conducted by AI Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) market today.
2023 marks the fourth time mabl has been recognized as an AI innovator by AI Breakthrough, having been honored in the same category in 2019, 2020, and 2022. Mabl’s repeat wins demonstrates our team’s commitment to delivering innovation to our customers and the broader quality engineering community. AI has always been an integral part of the mabl platform, with more exciting innovations on the horizon in 2024!
Read how mabl harnesses AI to make test automation easier and more efficient.
Automate Cross Browser Testing for Safari (WebKit), Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge
Unified Runner support for Safari (WebKit) and Firefox allows quality engineering teams to maximize the value of cross browser testing across four major browsers with mabl’s scalability and reliability. In addition to enabling testers to run cross browser tests in parallel and in sequence, tests are more reliable and less likely to break thanks to auto-healing. Tests results are also easier to share across the organization with mabl’s native integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Jira.
Build better user experiences for every customer, no matter how they choose to find your company. Explore how to build a high-impact automated cross browser testing strategy for Safari (WebKit), Firefox, Chrome, and Microsoft Edge.
4 Ways to Use ChatGPT for Automated Testing
The mabl team has long recognized the potential of intelligence to supercharge test automation, and we share the QE community’s excitement for emerging tools like ChatGPT for automated software testing. For the curious mabl user, there are a number of ways to use low-code test automation and ChatGPT for fun and productivity today.
Our experts explore four techniques for using ChatGPT as part of a low-code test automation strategy. See how to create scenarios for data-driven testing, summarize an automated test, specify selectors for locating UI elements, and write JavaScript snippets with generative AI.
Explore the frontiers of genAI and test automation.
3 Times Developers Should Be Testers (And 3 Times They Shouldn't)
Developers are spending a shrinking amount of time actually writing code, and automating tests with open source frameworks often results in maintenance debt that demands an increasing amount of developer time. Building a collaborative testing practice demands finding ways to optimize developer effort while helping them achieve their quality goals.
This starts with aligning testing contributions to everyone’s areas of expertise: developers are best suited to running unit tests, integration tests, and other early-stage quality checks in lower environments, while quality engineers can leverage their product knowledge and technical expertise to run comprehensive end-to-end tests.
Start building a collaborative testing practice for QA and developers.
Build Quality Digital Experiences with CSS Assertions and Soft Assertions
Expanded options for soft assertions introduce more detailed options for managing assertion failures, enabling quality teams to add greater flexibility to their software testing strategies and extract more data from functional and non-functional assertions, elevating the value of testing while supporting faster development cycles.
CSS assertions in mabl now enables quality teams to assert on both HTML and CSS, introducing richer controls over the visual aspects of their application. In conjunction with the new options for soft assertions, CSS assertions can be used to check important non-functional aspects of quality like brand and accessibility.
Read about mabl’s updates to CSS assertions and soft assertions.
Software Testing Strategies for Improving DevOps Metrics
Organizations of any size, industry, or maturity can harness DevOps best practices to improve their performance, particularly when they leverage the DORA research program. The 2023 Accelerate State of DevOps Report gathered insights from over 36,000 professionals from across the industry, helping the DORA team understand what practices differentiated high-performing DevOps teams. Using this data, they identified several key traits:
- They build with the user in mind
- They embrace flexibility with cloud
- They use AI and automation for faster code reviews
Learn how software testing can unleash DevOps success.
Low-Code Performance Testing Improves the User Experience
Performance has a profound impact on user satisfaction, conversion, and retention: a 1 second delay in response time can reduce web conversions by 7% and 53% of consumers will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Likewise, 45% of people will leave a slow application or website with a bad impression of a business. Unfortunately, the cost and complexity of traditional performance testing puts the practice out of reach for many.
The mabl understood these challenges and decided to empower teams to make performance testing a routine part of their workflows, starting with API load testing.
Discover how low-code performance testing can help teams build better applications.
How to Use Generative AI Tools in Software Testing
According to Stack Overflow’s 2023 Developer Survey, 55.17% of respondents are interested in using AI for software testing, but only 2.85% say they have a high degree of trust in AI tools. The trust gap and rising demand for AI skills is pushing quality professionals to navigate unknown waters.
This guide will help quality professionals understand the limits of current generative AI tools, where AI can be used in the testing lifecycle, and how quality teams can start building AI skills.
Start 2024 off strong by building genAI skills for software quality.
Commit to Extending the Reach of Software Testing in 2024
The breadth and variety of topics that trended in the test automation, software testing, and software development reflect the growing impact of quality. QE teams are already enabling their companies to deliver new releases to market faster, improve DevOps, and embrace AI without introducing defects to production environments. Moving into 2024, these demands will only become more urgent as teams have to do more with less.
If you're ready to expand the reach of quality in 2024, register for a free 14-day trial with mabl.
