Global IT consulting firm Capgemini recently completed its fifth-annual World Quality Report with partner HP. The study, the industry's largest of its kind, surveyed more than 1,500 respondents in 25 countries. It tracks the state of enterprise application quality assurance and testing practices, identifying emerging trends. This year's report found that quality assurance (QA) and application testing account for a staggering 25 percent of all IT spending, a big shift as more organizations undergo digital transformations and rely more heavily on applications, which are often the main interface between their operations and their customers. Makarand Teje, Capgemini's Senior Vice President of Applications, North America, shared some of the most interesting findings of this year's report and discussed the future of app testing in the enterprise.
Consulting: What are some key findings from this year's report?
Teje: We reached out to 1,500 participants from 25 countries and asked them 42 questions on some of the key trends in software quality assurance and testing. Interestingly what we're really finding here is the testing budget allocation has increased significantly. The QA function is moving more and more toward centralization. If you look at our client base, which is typically Global 1000 organizations, you are used to more silo-based tools, hardware and software testing organization. So there's an increased momentum for all of them to really create this sort of shared service factory and we've seen a significant uptick in the number of respondents who say we already have plans in place or we've implemented it this year or plan to soon. Centralization of the QA is going to be a big topic. Organizations that think testing should be done after the software is ready for release are rethinking their approach. We call this more of a left-shift in terms of the software development lifecycle. More and more organizations are saying we need a test strategy and quality team ready when we first try to build or implement software.
Consulting: What are clients demanding?
Teje: Our clients are asking for 3 things: Access to a multitude of devices, consistency in methodology of testing mobile applications, and access to staff with knowledge of mobile application testing. In mobile, the time to market requirements are much, much stronger. If a rollout takes about a year, you have sufficient time to start assembling the team. Mobile applications demand your rollout be between 60-90 days. That means faster turnaround time is really pushing them to create that strategy well in advance. Cloud is maturing; organizations are putting more of a focus on cloud testing for front-office applications.
Consulting: Why this renewed focus on application testing and QA?
Teje: The responses we heard were along the lines of, 'now we want to track every labor hour that is put into the assurance part.' If you are able to fix a defect in the requirement stage, it would probably cost you around $150 to fix it. But the same defect if found in the production stage would cost $15,000 to fix. That's a 100-times scale from a cost perspective resulting from tracking the error early in the process. That's really driving large-scale awareness, saying it's not so much about adding budget dollars to testing, but looking at the all-around composition of where is the test organization sitting today? Is it centralized? Is it really leveraging the asset base that every organization has? And does it have the right skillset to really deploy it? Organizations are taking a more holistic approach.
Consulting: What industries stand to benefit the most?
Teje: Financial services industries are clearly the largest adopters of the concept of centralized testing, allocating budgets, expecting more in the front-end. Followed by telecom service providers, and we're seeing the same level of maturity and awareness coming to utilities followed by retail, manufacturing and other sectors.
Consulting: What trends are you looking for with next year's report?
Teje: What we're expecting is the centralization will continue, that means more and more respondents will say they want to centralize their testing QA. I'm also really expecting cloud will stay where it is in terms of the expectation that more applications will go to cloud because it moved a very small percentage this year. A significant update in terms of mobile, we went from about 20 percent closer to the range of 50 percent. Expect somewhere between 70-75 percent next year of the number of organizations responding that we have deployed mobile applications, we have infrastructure in place to test them and we want to really improve on the quality. That is a big, big trend we're watching for next year.
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