by Vaios Vaitsis, Founder & CEO at Validata Group   To win, serve and retain customers, testing activities are becoming more pivotal as business process quality is deemed more important than time to market. Beginning with the business-driven change request, through to project scoping and on to DevOps adoption, the infrastructure for technical and regression testing must be present and aligned to every phase.

It is a fact that test automation shortens development cycles, avoids cumbersome repetitive tasks and create repeatable, reusable test scenarios that can be executed as often as needed to improve software quality. The first step is to identify the right test automation tool that fits your overall requirements from a variety of options available in the market, both commercial and open source.

Agile testing is a software testing practice that follows the principles of agile software development. Agile testing involves all members of a cross-functional agile team, with special expertise contributed by testers, to ensure delivering the business value desired by the customer at frequent intervals, working at a sustainable pace. With Agile, testing becomes an integral part of the core software development and actively participates though out the software coding process. Agile testing involves testing from the customer perspective as early as possible, testing early and often as code becomes available and stable enough from module/unit level testing.

Enjoy our top 7 most popular articles of 2016:

It is possible to reduce even more the time release of your product and improve the testing process within the new year. No miracles included on the list, just an upgraded way of thinking and trusting initiatives. Be prepared of what’s coming in 2017 by following some simple rules….

Faster Releases
Delivering new software can be done in just a couple of weeks instead of several months by slicing tasks into small pieces and by adopting Agile practices. Collaboration and technical practices are two ways that can help in reducing the amount of the time it takes to development:

Testers and developers. The antagonism divides them, but the same business goals bring them –inevitably- close together. As devices are increasingly more complex, the need for smarter communication methods is a necessity for the common good of the organization. Making the software product strong and unbeatable is the reason why these two must get on the same page and find a way to interact clearly and effectively.

Continuous Testing is the new buzzword emerging in today’s software testing business. But what does it mean and what value does it bring along?

During 2015 the big “attack of the bugs” took place on numerous organizations causing very serious problems on their functions and reputation (read HERE). The following year, 2016, seems to be –at least till today- more quiet.

Digital technology uses more personal data than ever before. Our smart phones hold a lot of personal data as well as our bank customer profiles. In order to keep safe all this important information, the software that they depend on must be flawless. This may sound too strict but we must keep in mind that even a small malfunction in the system can cause a big real-life impact and destroy an organization’s profits and reputation in just a second. What can save us from this mess?

An estimated of 1 billion people still use Excel spreadsheets for their reporting. However, in the new age of on-demand business software and the need for a collaborative and always connected business setup, there are areas in which spreadsheets are limiting as your business intelligence tool.