Richard Mort, a senior consultant at independent Quality Assurance, (QA), testing and cyber security for software systems and devices company, Resillion, here explores the challenges faced by the testing industry as it navigates the global shortage in testers, and suggests key approaches to ensure organisations quality assurance remains a constant capability alongside software development.Testers around the world will be celebrated on 9 September 2022 on International Testers Day. Celebrated for finding billions of bugs identified over the years, millions of instances where testing prevented enterprises from embarrassing outages, thousands of reputations saved and the never-ending quest to improve overall quality.
The appetite for companies to increase test capability by introducing new blood shows no sign of diminishing. The software testing market size exceeded USD 40 billion in 2020 and is estimated to grow at over 7% CAGR from 2021 to 2027. This growth is underpinned by several key factors:
Growing technological developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning
The rise in home working, driven by the Covid-19 Pandemic, created a high-growth need for AI-based test automation for remote applications
The expansion of digitalisation in Asia Asian software testing is set to grow from 20% revenue global share to 28.5% by 2027
The huge growth in IoT - it is estimated that 25 billion connected things were in use by the end of 2021 and this will just continue to accelerate producing immense volume of data
Against this backdrop, the ability to locate and hire test specialists is proving more and more difficult with everyone fishing in the same shrinking resource pond which in turn drives up wage demands and encourages head hunting. This is exacerbated by many testers reaching the end of their careers and taking early retirement when encouraged by the downtime' experienced during the lockdown- these are key people with years and years of experience and are difficult to replace.
These resource challenges are having an impact on ongoing digital transformation programmes. Harvey Nash stated within a 2021 poll that 67% of IT managers polled said a lack of skilled staff had slowed their digital transformation programmes.
What can be done to overcome the skills shortage? We believe the following should be considered as part of an overall strategy to ensure each organisation is able to continue to deploy an ongoing and vibrant quality assurance capability despite the current challenges.
Grow your own testing teams Many companies are put off by undertaking internal apprentice and graduate training schemes because of the perceived set-up costs, the expertise required to build and run the training and mentoring programmes and the ongoing pastoral care required. However, the alternative is typically to increase the use of contractors who can provide a quick fix but this will inevitably lead to higher costs and also a loss of valuable systems knowledge when they depart - in other words this is a false economy.
There are now a variety of companies that can provide the necessary learning structure, tailored technical and soft-skill programmes, ongoing management and mentorship to accelerate the creation of new highly-skilled, motivated and certified testing teams. These schemes are typically run both off-site in classroom conditions and also at the client's coal face ensuring full-exposure to the client's technical and business environments and encouraging the capability to network with other key IT and business representatives.
This is a highly competitive market therefore the cost to undertake such a third-party scheme could be very attractive thereby providing a commercially viable alternative to setting up such a scheme internally. In other words let someone else grow your own'.
Take a leap of faith with junior testers It is a common misconception from employers that they need to hire the most experienced software testing engineers in order to get the best fit person for the job. The truth is, the world of software development is constantly evolving, and what was relevant in software a decade ago, is completely obsolete now. There is also a view that testers require experience in specific toolsets in order to be immediately effective however the majority of testers with a base knowledge of tools (e.g. Selenium) can pick up others rapidly be them commercial or open source. This is particularly true of testers working within the agile and devops world with new tools seemingly coming onto the market every month.
There is great potential in deploying testers with less experience in roles perceived as requiring heavy hitters' - it takes a leap of faith to undertake this, but the results can be hugely beneficial for both the individual and the company involved and resolve potentially challenging resourcing issues. So the key focus for recruiters may be to find test engineers who have the ability to learn and rapidly apply new skills rather than constantly searching for the unicorn.
Consider managed services especially offshore Offshore as a managed service test resourcing alternative has been around for decades and surely it dips into the same global resource pool as everyone else and none of this is stop-press news. However, it's time to stop thinking in terms of vast offices housing scores of manual testers blasting away at hundreds of manual test scripts - those days are coming to an end.
The key objective now is to automate everything. Companies such as Resillion have invested in training highly skilled test automation engineers working offsite who use both commercial and open-source toolsets to undertake all testing required. This approach reduces the need for large manual testing teams switching the focus to technical test capability - less really
