Analyse Software Testing Effort/Budget in SDLC from The European Software Testing Benchmark Report 2022
Software projects’ growing efforts and budgets on Software Testing
The proportion of the SDLC Spent on Testing:
38% think 51+% of SDLC is spent on Testing.
“This shows that testing and quality assurance are slowly becoming more of a priority for businesses all around Europe”.
Please note that 12.3% of professionals are spending 71% — 90% of the SLDC on testing (and 1.2 % for 90+%).
In my previous articles, I stated that I spent ~70% of the whole SDLC on Test Automation and Continuous Testing, in return, I gained 10X+ productivity (compared to myself when working as a senior Java contractor). Some readers found it hard to believe. Now, you can see that I am not alone.
Some might argue my ~70% figure is still much higher than the average ~40%, shown in the chart. I take “Release Early, Release Often” seriously. For all my software, I push updates to production every working day (quite often, multiple times a day). Naturally, I spend more time on Software Testing, mostly Automated End-to-End Regression Testing. Also, I consider automated regression testing essential after the software is released, for support and maintenance.
Besides quality assurance, I have used test automation scripts to help with other activities, such as:
Prepare test data, for business analysts and manual testers
(check out this article: Without Solid Automated End-To-End Regression Testing, Exploratory Testing is Largely Compromised)Training
Bug-fixing (developers run automated tests)
(check out this article: Developer and Tester Collaboration with Automated Testing)
Overall IT Budget Devoted to Quality Assurance
The budget devoted to Software Testing is in line with the efforts.
“Our research showed that a majority of IT professionals are allocating around 31–50% of their budget to testing and quality assurance”.
As Robert C. Martin pointed out, if you want to save a big portion of the IT budget, go for Test Automation.
Summary
The report wrapped up with: “it is vital to showcase the growing importance of QA”. This shall be no surprise, as test automation is the foundation of Agile and DevOps.
So, if you are an IT Executive and a large percentage of functional testing in your software teams is conducted manually, act Now!
A piece of advice: be aware of fake test automation engineers and consultants and there are plenty. Check out this story: An IT Graduate’s frustration with a Fake ‘Senior Test Automation Engineer’.
If you find the right people or coach, you will see that test automation can be implemented with real benefits (to the whole team) in a matter of days. Check out the 35-Word Functional Test Automation Strategy, and my daughter’s article: Set up, Develop Automated UI tests and Run them in a CT server on your First day at work.
Related reading
My eBooks:
Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #2 Lord Ye Loves Dragon (葉公好龍)
Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #4 To win a war with words (纸上谈兵)
Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #7 Be There Just to Make Up the Number (滥竽充数)
Why JavaScript Is Not a Suitable Language for Real Web Test Automation?