Capgemini, a global leader in consulting, technology and outsourcing services and Sogeti, its Technology and Engineering Services subsidiary, today released the World Quality Report 2016, published in conjunction with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which examines the state of application quality and testing practices across multiple industries and 32 countries. The report reveals that despite 85% claiming that internet of things (IoT) products are a part of their business operations, over two thirds (68%) of organizations in which IoT plays a role, do not currently have a test strategy for this specific aspect of IT.

Organizations under pressure to deploy new digital products and services are finding it tough to strike a balance between quality and speed of development, particularly when it comes to deploying Internet of Things (IoT) technology. This year’s share of the IT budget devoted to quality assurance (QA) and Testing has dropped to 31% after a significant and worrying increase from 18% to 35% during the preceding four years. Despite this year’s reduction, there is an overall prediction that spending will increase to 40% in 2019.

Intelligence-led QA and Testing will help drive efficiency and keep costs down

This year’s World Quality Report finds that many companies are turning to machine-based intelligence to help cut costs and drive efficiency across the organization. The growing adoption of digital technologies is consuming large amounts of budget and businesses are finding it challenging to balance innovation with cost, with 48% failing to meet the contrasting demands of handling multiple test environments. To combat this, the report calls for greater investment in intelligence-driven QA to identify and predict quality issues before they occur.

Agile and DevOps continue to grow in adoption

This year’s report also reveals an increase in the adoption of agile testing methodologies and DevOps to help businesses roll out new products and services at greater speed. However, 44% of businesses are reluctant to include testing teams in the initial planning phase believing it will inhibit release speed, inadvertently putting the security of the business at risk. The report finds that DevOps implementation challenges go far beyond issues with QA and businesses risk isolating the benefits of DevOps if they are unable to break down business silos. In a bid to balance the additional costs of these new technologies, 40% of businesses are adopting predictive analytics in order to automate as much of the testing pipeline as possible.

Hans van Waayenburg, Member of the Group Executive Committee and Leader of the Testing Global Service Line, Capgemini Group said: “This year’s World Quality Report shows an increasing need for businesses to take a mature, strategic approach when it comes to quality assurance and testing. Digital transformation provides a huge opportunity for growth, but this can only be realized if customer and other stakeholder engagement is actively enhanced. Organizations must be proactive in breaking down silos between business, development, quality and operations, and use agile and DevOps to focus on customer value and business relevance. To retain a competitive edge, QA and Test organizations must move towards test ecosystem automation, predictive analytics and intelligence-led quality assurance and testing, so that they are able to ensure business outcomes.”

“With software driving our interactions and relationships, the focus of testing has pivoted toward the complete user experience,” explained Raffi Margaliot, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Applications Delivery Management, HPE Software. “This year’s report highlights that security, customer experience and quality are more important than ever. These elements are the underpinnings to ensure organizations can achieve the speed, quality and scale needed to succeed.”

As the internet of things takes an increasingly important role in business operations, every enterprise must adopt a risk-based test strategy that creates a secure test ecosystem. To do this the report recommends that, businesses invest in as-a-service solutions for testing environment management, data management and test execution, as well as higher overall levels of engineering in their testing teams in order to maintain their system integrity and help boost innovation.

Research methodology

The World Quality Report, which this year interviewed 1,600 respondents from 32 countries, is the only global report analyzing application quality and testing trends. It has been produced annually since 2009. Now in its 8th edition, the 2016 report adopted data collection through computer aided telephone interviews. Based on analysis of six respondent groups: CIO, VP Application, IT Director, QA/Testing Manager, CDO/CMO, and CTO/Product Head, the report surveyed respondents from across the globe through quantitative interviews followed by qualitative deep-dive discussions.