Software testing comes of age

As quality reigns supreme, users realise that investing in testing services today is better rather than risking business failure tomorrow.

Software bugs or errors cost the US economy an estimated $ 59.5 billion annually, which is equivalent to 0.6 per cent of its gross domestic product. Testing is booming as a business with the promise that it can help save at least half of the loss.

In India, the reported software testing revenues might form 2 per cent of the market for IT-related services, which is estimated to reach the $20-billion mark soon. It's not surprising, therefore, that apart from pure-play software-testing companies like Thinksoft, Maverick, ReadyTestGo, etc, large Indian software companies including the Big Five are eyeing this booming opportunity. While most Indian independent software testing services have concentrated on the BFSI domain, pure-play players like RelQ have gone way ahead and have started addressing multiple segments like BFSI, wireless, mobile, embedded systems (medical electronics, aerospace) and software games. Many Indian software companies realized the booming opportunity in software testing and quickly formed independent practices to tap the market. They expect a major chunk of their business from their software testing services business. Leading IT companies now position testing as a standalone service and often find it an easier route to gain entry into new accounts for offshoring services. Revenues from testing services are poised to grow exponentially over the next five years. For instance, Infosys has specialised groups to address the software testing space. It offers software testing services as part of its Independent Validation Solutions (IVS) offering. The IVS practice was set up as a separate group, consisting of test engineers, analysts and specialists with multiple years of experience in testing. Infosys believes that its global delivery model would prove to be a competitive advantage in the software testing space too.

Outsourcing is the way?

Today the infrastructure and skill requirement of a software-testing centre is increasing as the variety of testing platforms grow. Today, there's a need to test software for internet/intranet and web. Short development life cycles, hundreds of thousands of users, need for universality, demand for reliable performance, and the need for security pose lot of challenges in web application development and testing. As web applications become more complex, testing
web applications becomes critical, particularly from the standpoint of performance.

There is also a need for the testing companies to align their existing testing methods with customer value, and aim their testing efforts toward assuring customer satisfaction (which is not the same goal as reducing the number of defects). Even, there have been few maturity models developed exclusively for software testing that give practical guidelines for assessing the maturity level of testing in an organisation and for step by step improvement of the process.

Testing Schools

It is still true that testing is yet to get the attention of academic institutions. Given the promising rate of growth in testing that took over the last few years, the next five years will see more specialised programmes around software testing which would further strengthen the position of software testing as a sound career option.

Of late, there have been software testing institutes in the private sector that teach software professionals effective methods of incorporating test into the product life cycle, conducting tests, reporting on test activity and managing test groups, test strategy development, techniques to generate functional and non-functional test scenarios/cases, etc.

However, the industry wants the universities and colleges to come forward to launch degree programmes in software quality and testing.