In one small global survey, respondents faced with this prospect cited negative impacts and expected AI to solve the problem

Through an online survey of 406 decision-makers of test operations at production development facilities in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the Asia pacific region to evaluate current testing capabilities and sentiments around the use of AI in automating test processes, 86% of respondents were “moderately satisfied” to “very satisfied” with their current testing systems, and 75% of respondents were using a combination of automated and manual testing.

In such enterprises, respondents indicated that manual and partially automated testing strategies could not keep pace with the increasing complexity of products, with 45% indicating they would consider using a fully automated approach in the next three years (a growth of 409% on year), while 52% stated they would look at AI for integrating complex test suites (325% growth).

In the survey, 11% of respondents cited having a fully automated strategy, while the most anticipated technology- or operations- linked improvements from automation and AI were: increased productivity, ability to simulate product function/performance and bug fix automation/simulation.

Other findings

In respondents facing growing complexity in product development, 77% indicated that number of tests required was increasing, and this could slowing the process without automation. Also:

  • The primary technical challenges resulting from testing complexities were cited as long cycles, accurately capturing bugs and issues, and then fixing them. These problems were cited as directly impacting business results and the product development process. Respondents ranked the outcomes in the following order:
    • 51%: Security breach risk
    • 48%: Increased expenses
    • 42%: Slower time to market
    • 36%: Defective product
    • 34%: Loss of revenue
  • In respondents shifting to intelligent automated testing strategies, their organizations expected the following operational benefits:
    • o59% cited increased productivity
    • 54% cited the ability to simulate product function or performance
    • 53% cited bug fix automation or simulation to save time on fix-retest cycles.
  • Production benefits anticipated by respondents in shifting to intelligent automated testing strategies included:
    • 59% citing increased customer satisfaction
    • 50% citing the ability to reduce time to market

According to Jeff Harris, Vice President, Portfolio and Global Marketing, Keysight Technologies, Inc, which commissioned the survey: when asked about the future, respondents felt pressure to do more test automation, and felt that manual or partially automated strategies would not be able to keep up with the needs of organizations today.

“… Without AI-powered automation, they will struggle to conquer testing complexities. Additionally, we expect the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate adoption of remote development, automated test sequencing. We also expect a much higher use of digital twins as development teams strive to continue working together but from different locations.”