[Disclaimer: The future description in this article is the author’s personal view and by no means any indication of Micro Focus products direction.]

Greetings to the community! 2022 is here, bringing many opportunities with it. Software quality assurance (QA) is only going to become more important as businesses compete in today’s changing markets while transforming for future opportunities.

Three growing trends will impact test management across all industries. I’ll cover what you should keep an eye on from 2022 onwards.

1. Mining Insights with AI-Powered Data Analysis

You may have heard people say that data is the “new oil.’ Whether you agree or not, data is highly valuable in all sorts of business scenarios.

Getting the most value from data is probably on your list of 2022 priorities.

With no exception, there are treasures buried in your test management data. Currently, Micro Focus ALM products (ALM Octane and ALM/Quality Center) can analyze your test data in many ways. These products help you:

• Discover trends
• Identify anomalies
• Detect bottlenecks
• Find correlations
• Pinpoint risky code areas
• Narrow down causes of build failure

Many organizations have yet to use test management data enough. Data siloes still exist. But with a highly integrated test management environment—and the implementation of DevOps toolchains—more and more relevant data can contribute to AI-powered analysis.

Machine learning-based AI analyzes data without relying on hard-coded programs and boasts capabilities comparable to human experts. For example, current test management products can present the data and leave humans to detect anomalies or reduce waste. Machine learning can identify these outliers directly from data without sticking to a certain pattern.

2. Cloud & SaaS Continue Growing

The pressure and workload for delivering business-critical software have increased a lot in recent years. And the cloud has proven to be the platform for faster app delivery—thus, cloud adoption continues to grow.

Our main ADM products are now SaaS, bringing big savings in application overhead and improving your business’s competitive advantage.

While our current SaaS model provides an equivalent experience as an on-premises deployment, it’ll keep evolving in the coming years. Gradually, it will transition to “everything as a service.”  How you access ALM will change from mainly user access to API access.

Imagine what test management as a service will unlock. ALM server will act as a brain that receives requests from different parts of the body, intelligently finds meaning from the data, and performs its governance role.

A request would come to the ALM server and say, “Test this software and give me a report,” along with the requirements and source code. Then the ALM server creates a plan and coordinates all the resources to do the work.

3. Increased Automation

We are seeing automation levels grow rapidly in all industries. Robotic process automation (RPA) and AI bots are all around us.

Automation is the reason ALM/Quality Center and ALM Octane help QA teams do their work efficiently. With automation capabilities, you can

• Generate UFT One test scripts.
• Automatically collect test results.
• Establish traceability among requirements, source code, tests, and defects.
• See dashboard data automatically updated in real-time

And new technologies will give us more amazing capabilities to automate. For example, we currently set up workflows and run them automatically. But is that the best workflow? The judgment and improvement all rely on human feelings. In the future we will see “autonomous” or “adaptive” workflows that can adjust themselves to achieve optimal processes.

Another automation scenario we can imagine is test data generation. Currently, automated test data generation is mainly tables for database testing. With AI able to understand source code, we expect to see automatically derived test data from the code. Such data can boost test coverage so that all cases—including those invalid and extreme ones—are tested.

What’s Next?

Software QA and test management is a rapidly changing field with frequent innovations. To stay competitive, it’s essential that you leverage the best current technology and watch out for new trends.

Get the latest information from this community, and Micro Focus ALM products homepages:

• ALM Octane
• ALM/Quality Center

What are some of your QA or test management goals for 2022? Log in and let us know in the comments!

Have technical questions?  Visit the ALM/Quality Center User Discussion Forum or the ALM Octane User Discussion Forum

Keep up with the latest Tips & Info about ALM/Quality Center or Tips & Info about ALM Octane

Do you have an Idea or Product Enhancement Request? Submit it in the ALM/Quality Center Idea Exchange or the ALM Octane Idea Exchange