Abstracts Category : Other

Future Trends and Development Methods in Software Quality Assurance

by Pivi Williams

The main purpose of this thesis is to study the future trends and development methods in software quality assurance from a testing point of view. The main scope of this thesis is to study what views and expectations customers and personnel of Comiq Ltd have about the future trends and development methods in software quality assurance, how those trends will impact the development methods in the future and what should be the focus areas of Comiq in the future to update and maintain employees high competence levels. The background studies of the thesis focus on current predictions in relation to agile and DevOps principles as well as test automation. Agile and DevOps are the main trends that are commonly used in software development and quality assurance is an essential part of both agile and DevOps. The research method was a quantitative data analysis. The sample data was collected in June 2017 by conducting an online questionnaire that was addressed to Comiq customers and personnel. A total of 93 people participated. The questionnaire had a total of 15 questions relating to the properties of quality assurance experts, test automation and methods of importance in achieving future quality goals. Based on the study results, the most important properties of quality assurance experts are understanding the customers needs, communications skills, and continuous development of skills and understanding the business area. Test automation is currently seen as one of the most important factors in improving the quality of software. Overall quality can be assured by automating all necessary functionalities including regression testing. Test environments should be automated and version control and functional requirement management should continuously support testing. The biggest obstacles seen by the participants in achieving the overall target state of quality assurance are lack of test automation, money, time, recourses, and current software development methods and efficient ways of working. Test automation is an area that will continue to grow and it should be invested in more in the future. Results show that customers and personnel are aware of current trends and want to improve overall quality assurance by growing maturity of agile and DevOps and by involving testing as early as possible.