Software Quality Engineering
Speed in DevOps - using No Code and Low Code in software testing to accelerate software delivery.
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In the last few years, digital transformation has dominated business strategies with the goal of seizing new market opportunities, retaining customers, and avoiding being disrupted by competitors. However, with the global economic outlook growing uncertain, many business leaders, advisors, and industry analysts are now stressing the importance of organizational agility.
Organizational agility is not just essential for growth, but it's also necessary for survival. In a 2019 survey by Outsystems, over 3,000 IT professionals across six continents identified four top digital transformation goals: being faster, costing less, expanding into new markets, and being customer-centric.
Despite this, many organizations face recruitment challenges, with retention of developer talent being an equally grave problem. Demand for application development is higher than ever, but recruiting experienced developers to meet the demand is almost impossible. To overcome these challenges and speed up application delivery, organizations have invested in customer-centric practices like Agile Methodologies and low-code application development platforms.
Low-code development requires less coding than traditional application development, which allows developers to quickly deliver applications and focus their efforts on more complex and unique work. Non-IT professionals with programming knowledge also use low-code tools to develop simple applications. No-code development targets nontechnical users in various business functions who understand business needs and rules but have little or no coding experience.
Low-code development has already proven its immense potential and worth in 2021 and is set to take over the web application market. According to Gartner, by 2025, we will see 70% of applications being powered by low-code or no-code technologies. The world quality report 21-22 confirms this, with new options like low-code and no-code automation being of high interest to organizations.
Agility and speed of change are essential for companies to survive and expand. Connected to the investments in Agile Methodologies, another trend observed is the move from project-based software delivery to a product-centric operating model.
In summary, organizational agility is crucial for businesses to not just survive but thrive in the digital age. It's important to invest in customer-centric practices, low-code development platforms, and automation techniques that increase responsiveness to the business, accelerate digital transformation, and reduce dependency on hard-to-hire technical skills.
Fueled by digital innovation and the desire to differentiate, demand for application development seems higher than ever. The survey found that only around one third of organizations have less than 10 apps planned for delivery in 2019. In contrast - over a third have 25 or more apps planned.
This hunger for custom application demands the right resources to create, test and deploy them. As highlighted on the previous slide, recruiting experienced developers for meeting this demand for applications is almost impossible.
Irrespective of the resourcing issue, business leaders are not happy with the time it takes to deliver applications to their customers. In other words “Time is money” -> the faster you can deliver applications, the more likely you can beat your competition and win and retain those valuable customers. As we can see, the majority of applications still take 3 months or more to be delivered.
The top three challenges that complicate or delay the delivery of applications are:
• Integration with legacy systems
• Fuzzy and changing requirements
• The time necessary for testing and QA
To overcome those challenges and speed up application delivery organization said they have mainly invested in customer-centric practices like Agile Methodologies.
Organizations were also asked what technology they had invested in over the past year to increase the speed of application delivery. What is striking here is the high ranking of low code application development platforms.
This was the outlook delivered in 2019.
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According to IDC – low code tools and test automation are the top two 2023 investment priorities for European organizations to speed up the development process,
So - Brushing aside the skepticism from the developer communities, the low-code technology promises to help developers save time by eliminating time-consuming repetitive codes and thereby freeing them up to ideate and create more intuitive applications.
From an organization's perspective, their main reasons for using a low-code platform are
•accelerate digital transformation,
•increase responsiveness to the business,
•and reduce dependency on hard-to-hire technical skills.
The same arguments apply to software test automation.
As a conclusion - the flexibility and independence argument for fully coded test automation seems no longer providing the right values for businesses.
The recent world quality report confirms this. When asked which automation techniques respondents would envisage to use we can see that options such as low-code and no-code automation are of high interest.
Connected to the investments in Agile Methodologies, another trend that can be observed with organizations is the move from project based software delivery to a product-centric operating model.
A project-based model typically results in businesses defining their requirements upfront, often at the start of the year. There is a distinct start and end date in place and a project team is built around the scope to be delivered. Often this project team is in existence only for one particular project – the next project will likely contain a totally different mix of people.
In many cases, test automation was not even a consideration, as the changes were large and infrequent and once the project was completed, the implemented solution was maintained by a BAU organization.
In contrast in a product-centric operating model, stable teams are created to deliver digital products. Work is brought to the people rather than people to the work. The focus of this operating model is to deliver incremental change often and in small chunks, reducing the time from inception of an idea to delivering business value. The key idea behind moving from a project to a product-based model is to measure your success based on business outcomes instead of delivering pre-defined scope and profitability rather than costs.
This has also changed the value of test automation completely.
Supporting the move to a product-oriented organization is the focus on optimizing value streams. The notion of value streams and value stream optimization also has been around for many years. Amplified by the move to product-centric delivery models, the focus on value streams is getting embedded in software development & testing.
A value stream comprises actions that add value to customers from initial request to realization. It begins with concept, proceeds through development, delivery, and support, always starting and ending with a customer.
The "team topology" refers to how work is divided among product teams to achieve their mission, including team structure, scope, and relationships.
Most products today are complex, requiring multiple teams across systems and technologies to develop. This necessitates a shift from siloed responsibilities to whole-team responsibility for delivery and quality of applications.
What effect does this have on team composition?
So what roles or personas can be found in product teams? What you will see is just an example of different personas that could be found in a product team.
The actual roles can vary; the important aspect is that teams have all roles required to create and deliver applications – to the desired quality.
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It is also important to understand the different motivations behind these personas to support them with the right technologies for doing their job.
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The developer and Test Automation Engineer are wanting to use their programming skills yet not be bogged down with commodity work. They want to use their skills to solve they hard problems. Many times they are focused on specific technology due to their level of specialization.
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The Test and Business Analyst on the other side want to ensure that applications deliver what they promise and are of a high quality. The Test Analyst does not want to become a developer but wants to use automation to free time to do exploratory testing. The Business Analyst is happy to contribute to Test Automation but lacks the desire to become an automation expert.
Many times their requirement for test automation covers multiple different technologies that need to be tested to assure the complete value stream.
What is also important is the ability for non developers to understand what automated tests are doing – being able to read the test - to be able to ensure the right risk coverage.
These motivational aspects are important to understand to equip the different personas with the right technology.
Developers and Test Automation Engineers are therefore more likely to engage with Low-Code test automation – where they can still use their coding expertise to great benefit – and retain their core skillset whereas Test and Business analysts are likely to be more motivated to use no-code solutions as the barrier of “code” disappears but the benefits of test automation positively impacts their daily life.
The managers role is to ensure that the team delivers the business value – fast and of high quality – no matter what technology is used.
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Summary
Organizational agility is crucial in today's rapidly evolving business landscape, marked by the dominance of digital transformation strategies. The aim is to capitalize on new market prospects, enhance customer service, and stay ahead of diverse and numerous competitors. Amidst global economic uncertainties, agility is not just about growth, but also about survival. A survey by Outsystems in 2019 revealed that key digital transformation goals for organizations included being faster, cost-effective, expanding into new markets, and being customer-centric. However, challenges persist, such as recruitment difficulties for IT professionals and the need for quicker application delivery. The shift towards low-code and no-code development platforms is gaining momentum, promising to revolutionize application development, with Gartner projecting a 70% adoption rate by 2025. These technologies not only accelerate digital transformation but also reduce reliance on hard-to-find technical skills. This trend extends to software test automation, where low-code and no-code options are gaining traction, enabling faster, more stable development. Embracing these approaches enhances software delivery speed, automation rates, and expands testing coverage, ultimately driving business success.
