World Quality Report 2020-21

A more recent edition of the report is available.
Click here to check the latest version of the WQR.

Key take-aways

• Don’t silo responsibility for QA. Share it. Quality practices should be integrated into every part of the lifecycle – and should be a part of everyone’s mindset
• Adopt smart ways of working. Focus on value added activities by leveraging the insights gained through implementation of analytics, AI and ML in QA.
• Greater savings can be achieved by using test infrastructure smartly. Maturity and the adoption of cloud-based technologies provide an excellent opportunity for organizations to optimize their test environment and test tool licensing costs.
• Be better prepared for business continuity. Run disaster planning and testing more often. Test the application architecture and ensure it will be able to adapt in line with any changes to business models.

The 12th edition of the World Quality Report highlights the fact that expectations of QA have been steadily increasing.

There’s an upward trend in almost every objective for which we have previous data. These include the need to support business growth and the importance of ensuring end-user satisfaction. Both of these indicate that QA is no longer seen as a backroom discipline, divorced from the rest of the organization. QA has been steadily evolving – from an independent function to an integrated function, and now to an inclusive function.

Also, the role of the QA practitioner is transforming from finding and reporting defects, to becoming the orchestrator of quality; and they are expected to ensure that the other engineering team members inculcate quality in their way of working. User experience and production testing is also gaining ground implying that QA is not only shifting left but also moving right.