How the adoption of new technologies for growth depends on Software Testing?

The imperative of developing new quality software applications with shorter lifecycles means businesses have to adopt robust software testing solutions. In addition, businesses need to streamline their processes to achieve better productivity, quality products and services, and customer satisfaction. To stay ahead in the competition, businesses have to develop and deliver better products or services. To achieve the objectives, new technologies should be made part of the product development or service delivery processes. However, it is easier said than done, adoption of new technologies can bring a host of challenges as well. 

Before addressing the challenges, the business intentions behind implementing new technology should be understood. 

Any new technology should have the potential to disrupt the current business processes or ecosystem in a positive way. It should enable the organization to meet its overall goals through accelerated time to market, reduced rework, and by ensuring quality standards. Besides, any new technology should have the capability to innovate and improve the existing systems.

One of the best examples that could be cited is that of the Uber cab services. By introducing the innovative method of requesting cab rides through digital technologies, the company has not only made it big but also enhanced the user experience as well.  Thus, the motivations behind implementing new technologies should be:

·         Will it improve the end user experience?

·         Will it be easy to implement or be cost effective?

·         Will it help the company to stay competitive?

While leveraging the benefits of implementing new technologies, businesses should check for their quality as well. It is only during software testing that the inadequacies of the processes, technologies or the product come to light. Let us delve into the advantages that software application testing can bring in its wake. The ones discussed below are on account of implementing test automation and show how the latter can help businesses to adopt new technologies. 

Ensuring security: A rigorous software application testing covering the entire SDLC can identify the vulnerabilities in a software product. These vulnerabilities can be exploited by frauds to steal sensitive business or personal information. The consequences of such frauds can entail huge financial and other costs for the business. To prevent such an occurrence, businesses can adopt advanced technologies to plug the vulnerabilities and secure the systems. For example, by implementing a Virtual Private Network or VPN, the network architecture of a business can be made secure. The VPN technology would enable the data or information to be encrypted while being transmitted from one node to the other. 

Quality validation: Most of the modern gadgets run on embedded software. The software is part of the system firmware that directs a gadget to perform a certain task. These can range from regulating the temperature of an AC or refrigerator to controlling the functioning of a microwave oven and more. When the world is headed to embrace IoT in a big way, choosing a specific software testing methodology becomes important. The performance of embedded software a la IoT can be made ‘market proof’ through software application testing. Hence, be it IoT or any other technology, its functionalities, features or performance can be validated by way of QA testing. 

Accelerated time to market: Competition and the changing dynamics of user preferences are forcing companies to release quality software with shorter life cycles. This puts pressure on the software testing service provider to adopt better QA methodologies or paradigms. Continuous integration and testing in DevOps are the outcomes of such emerging needs. With continuous testing the glitches are identified early in the SDLC leading to an improvement in the user experience. Moreover, software testing companies can implement a better software testing methodology to validate the application or service operating in the multi-dimensional fields of mobility, cloud, big data, social media and IoT. 

Migration to the cloud: Businesses are increasingly leaning onto cloud computing to reduce cost, build efficiencies and streamline operations. Moving the legacy systems onto the cloud architecture in the form of IaaS, SaaS, PaaS or DaaS requires QA testing. The process of Quality Assurance creates a roadmap for the legacy systems to be migrated to cloud. Besides, QA can suggest the kind of cloud infrastructure a business should adopt such as public, hybrid or private. For example, even if a public cloud is less secure than the other two, the right QA methodology can test the quality of the product rigorously. 

Conclusion

Quality assurance ensures that the product or service developed/delivered by a business meets the objectives of performance and user expectations. It also suggests why a new technology should be adopted to stay ahead of the competition curve. 

This Article is originally published at Medium.com, How will Software Testing enable you to adopt new technologies for growth?