Throughout 2022, one thing has been made clear to anyone observing the U.S. economy: it is not a matter of if there will be a downturn, but when.
In response, companies are looking for any way to lower expenses and have been reevaluating many of their ordinary priorities. Investments in IT are facing increased scrutiny, with DevOps teams facing budget cuts right in the middle of a digital transformation boom. Even still, team leaders must find ways to keep up with the pace of innovation while meeting their SLAs — though with fewer resources than in years past.
Thankfully, one possible solution–the use of low-code and no-code technologies–is on the rise. With their use expected to triple by 2025, up from less than 25% in 2020, these platforms stand to transform DevOps teams’ software testing capabilities by helping them deploy higher quality software tools and updates more quickly.
Recent advancements in AI and quality engineering have all helped make low-code/no-code testing platforms more accessible to companies of all sizes, which in turn, have enabled their DevOps teams to achieve more with less.
Enabling New Testers
There is wide appeal among low-code applications as they require a less-technical skillset to use, they’re easier to put in production, and they’re a relatively smaller project to develop. However, as low-code applications proliferate through the industry, they have become more advanced, with their lifecycle development becoming increasingly complex. Application code still must be tested, and it must meet the same standards as fullstack custom applications. While an individual application may not require many resources to implement, organizations do not stop at just one, spreading already thin DevOps teams even thinner.
The solution, then, exists in low-code enterprise software testing solutions. DevOps teams can tackle the increasing complexity of low-code application development by expanding the number of overall company employees who support testing activities, effectively leveraging the business and subject matter experts. By closing the software-testing skills gap between DevOps teams and the rest of an organization, developers can spend more time on the areas that can’t be covered with the low-code creation and testing. Better allocated development teams can work more efficiently and streamline common bottlenecks in the software development lifecycle.
Getting Ahead of Regular Platform Updates
When building on a platform rather than creating a new application in house, the updates of those platforms are usually controlled by the external vendor and not the development or ops team. Therefore, anyone using one of those platforms must take into consideration how the platforms they’re using will update throughout the year. Some of those changes can break functionality of the apps running on top of them. DevOps teams are thus tasked with the additional workload of verifying any new functions, assessing their utility for the organization, and–most importantly–ensuring that the update did not break any of their existing customizations. And if teams are using multiple platforms, the churn of verification increases exponentially.
Low-code automated testing solutions slash the time spent verifying platform updates. With tests that require little time to get running, teams can manage risks associated with a platform update. Teams can leverage low-code and no-code technologies to cut out the complexity, rather than relying on understanding of release notes to investigate why their app may no longer function as expected. Pairing the simplicity of a platform with the accessibility of these technologies enables DevOps teams to maintain their forever-changing workflows with the same levels of high-quality software.
Creating Customized Solutions at Scale
Creating customized solutions at scale has traditionally required large engineering teams to keep up with the pace of development without sacrificing quality. In today’s volatile hiring market, businesses may be less able to invest in larger teams, instead relying on their existing teams to scale the value of their solutions to a greater number of customers. Low-code software testing solutions now make this previously impossible concept achievable. As technology further trends towards agility and adaptability, small and large DevOps teams can rely on these solutions for a more efficient development process.
About the Author
Mav Turner is SVP of Product at Tricentis. Tricentis is a global leader in enterprise continuous testing. The Tricentis AI-powered, continuous testing platform provides a new and fundamentally different way to perform software testing. An approach that’s totally automated, fully codeless, and intelligently driven by AI. It addresses both agile development and complex enterprise apps, enabling enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation by dramatically increasing software release speed, reducing costs, and improving software quality. Widely credited for reinventing software testing for DevOps, cloud, and enterprise applications, Tricentis has been recognized as a leader by major industry analysts, including Forrester, Gartner, and IDC.
Featured image: ©ZinetroN
