As a nonprofit-organization with its mission of “advancing the software testing profession”, ISTQB® regularly conducts surveys to assess the trends in testing industry world-wide. Such surveys are publicly available on the ISTQB® Web Site. In 2015 we conducted the first survey looking at the “Worldwide Software Testing Practices”, that is now followed by the second edition, that is published in this report.
The survey covers several topics, ranging from organizational and budgetary aspects, to techniques/ processes/ tools, through skills and competencies; we think it provides useful information for all the professionals involved in the testing market, as well as direction for the further evolution of the ISTQB® scheme.
The survey was designed by the ISTQB® Marketing Working Group and endorsed by ISTQB® Member Boards, accredited training providers and exam providers, collecting more than 2000 responses from 92 countries.
The most significant findings from ISTQB® Effectiveness Survey 2017-2018
- The outcome of the 2017 – 18 survey is mostly in parallel with the results of the one done in 2015 – 16.
- Main improvement areas in software testing are test automation, knowledge about test processes, and communication between development and testing.
- Top five test design techniques utilized by software testing teams are use case testing, exploratory testing, boundary value analysis, checklist based, and error guessing.
- Trending topics for software testing profession in near future will be test automation, agile testing, and security testing.
- New technologies or subjects that are expected to affect software testing in near future are security, artificial intelligence, and big data.
- Non-testing skills expected from a typical tester are soft skills, business/domain knowledge, and business analysis skills.