Automatic for the people. JetBrains’ survey shows that the number of organizations where more than half of QA professionals only perform manual testing is only 27%.
Organizations are becoming better informed about the importance of testing, especially automated testing, according to this year’s survey by JetBrains on the state of the developer ecosystem.
Therefore, it is probably not surprising to learn that the number of organizations where more than half of QA professionals only perform manual testing is only 27%. This means that if you’re a test engineer, you’ll probably want to have coding skills in your toolbox, especially since most organizations (73% of respondents) have between 1 and 3 QAs per 10 developers.
Even at a ratio of 3 to 10, leveraging code and automation to multiply test coverage is becoming essential. So if you’re thinking about which languages to learn or brush up on, consider that of the coding languages most used by respondents who identified themselves as testers, JavaScript/TypeScript was the leader, at 37% of testers. Rounding out the top three were Python and Java, at 34% and 32%, respectively.
Automation focuses on APIs and UI
Of course, tests are typically not written from scratch: QA professionals rely on testing frameworks and tools. In the 2022 JetBrains survey, the most popular testing tool among professionals was Postman, followed by the JUnit and Jest frameworks. This year, JUnit has surpassed Postman in popularity and is now used by 33% of respondents, compared to just 31% in 2022. Postman is typically associated with API testing, while JUnit is a framework for unit testing. , generally the business. layer. The logical conclusion would be that the focus of automation has shifted away from the API and UI, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
In fact, survey participants reported that automation was still largely focused on these two areas specifically. At the top of the list were APIs, which 84% of respondents were targeting for automation. The next best candidate for automation was the user interface, which was automated by 52% of respondents. Desktop automation rounded out the top three most popular automation goals at 16%. This seems to indicate that testing in general has increased, both automated testing and unit testing.
The frameworks and tools used to create tests often involve a specific type of application or stack. While Postman and JUnit work with a variety of applications, Jest is quite focused on web applications, and that is consistent with the survey results. In 2023, web applications will make up the majority of testing targets (68%).
Testers turned off by mobile
There was a huge gap between people working on web apps and those working on desktop apps, which came in second at just 14%. Curiously, mobile represented only 10%. While it’s not entirely clear why mobile devices rank so low among testers, given that mobile browsing accounts for more than half of web traffic, it’s conceivable that 68% of web apps being tested support and/or include the mobile web, leaving 10% to include native mobile applications and games.
Unit testing remains the largest piece of the testing puzzle and is reportedly present in 63% of the software projects respondents work with. 83% of respondents are writing unit tests themselves and 80% of respondents reported that testing is an integrated part of their overall software development process. Integration, end-to-end, and performance testing are on the rise. Additionally, despite increased accessibility awareness and legislation, only 14% of respondents are conducting accessibility testing as part of their current process.
TestRail, the best test management tool
One interesting gap uncovered by the survey was test case management tools. Nearly half of respondents (46%) reported that test case design was part of their QA process. The most popular design technique was based on use cases (51%), followed by user stories (39%). That said, 41% of respondents use Office documents to store test cases versus a specialized test case tool, and 34% admitted to not using specific tools. Of those using test management tools, TestRail was first (21%), followed by Azure (17%) and then Xray for Jira (14%).
Lastly, if you’re wondering how much testing organizations outsource, participants in this survey reported that 96% of testing is done in-house. Not a bad metric to keep in mind if you’re considering getting into software testing.
