How You Should Be Using AI for Testing and Quality Assurance
My colleagues and I are often asked, “How should I be using AI in my business? Where can it be most impactful?”
Though there are several answers to that question, I’ve seen AI making significant strides in the field of testing and quality assurance (QA), revolutionizing the way software is tested and ensuring higher levels of accuracy and efficiency.
One of the most significant contributions of AI in testing is test automation.
Traditionally, software testing has been a laborious and time-consuming process, often prone to human errors. However, AI-powered testing tools can now automate repetitive test cases, allowing your QA teams to focus on more complex scenarios. AI-driven test automation not only saves time but also enhances test coverage, leading to more reliable software releases. AI holds promise in aiding QA testers in the creation of automation scripts. QA engineers possess distinctly different skills compared to software engineers. Currently, scripting demands a portion of software engineering expertise, which can pose challenges. The expectation is that AI will support your QA engineers in crafting these automation scripts.
Machine learning is something else to take a closer look at right now, as this subset of AI plays a vital role in improving test accuracy. By analyzing historical test data and outcomes, machine learning algorithms can identify patterns and trends that human testers might miss. This enables the prediction of potential defects, helping your QA teams prioritize critical areas for testing and ensuring better overall software quality.
I would also recommend AI for exploratory testing.
AI-powered testing tools can particularly help in exploratory testing by performing intelligent exploratory testing. What do I mean by “intelligent”? Instead of executing predefined test cases, these tools can simulate human testers by exploring the software, identifying potential issues, and adapting to changing application behaviour. This approach is very useful in uncovering hidden defects and ensuring a more thorough testing process.
AI-powered testing tools can also help predict client behavior, detect fraudulence that is not captured with traditional functional tests and, at the same time, replicate manual activities. They can be especially useful in eliminating test coverage overlaps, in optimizing test automation, and in improving agility and predictability through self-learning.
AI should also be playing a key role in performance testing, as it can simulate thousands of users concurrently interacting with an application. Additionally, AI-driven load testing tools can identify performance bottlenecks and scalability issues. Resultantly, this will allow your developers to fine-tune their applications for optimal performance and ensure a smooth user experience, even under heavy loads.
Another significant area where AI shines in QA is in the field of anomaly detection. AI algorithms can continuously monitor system behaviour and identify unusual patterns or deviations from expected norms. This early detection of anomalies helps in proactively addressing potential issues before they escalate into critical problems.
And no matter what other use cases you consider, don’t forget about AI’s “plain language” value. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is an AI technology that has found several applications in testing and QA. NLP allows testers to write test cases in plain language, which the AI-powered tools can then interpret and convert into executable scripts. This bridges the gap between technical and non-technical team members, making testing more accessible to all stakeholders and improving collaboration.
Why Should You Trust AI for QA?
A notable advantage of AI integration in QA lies in the refinement of test cases. AI assists developers in constructing practical and well-regulated test cases. This is a realm where conventional testing methods often fall short, limiting developers' ability to explore additional testing possibilities. AI-driven project analysis significantly reduces the time required, allowing developers to explore novel avenues for test case optimization.
Where QA also plays an important role is in monitoring the quality of training data. Every AI model requires regular retraining. After testing and validating your AI model performance for the QA test, the next step is retraining your machine learning model or continuously improving the model in line with current features. The objective of this is to ensure that the quality of your AI model in QA is up to date, gives appropriate quality results, and provides the chance to enhance accuracy.
The quality of the model is intricately tied to the nature of the data it was trained upon. Developers can employ training data to educate AI models in processing information and making deductions. The reliability, accuracy, and lack of bias in AI models are heavily reliant on the characteristics of the data they underwent training with. To guarantee the compatibility of training data with the model, the data itself needs evaluation for traits like completeness, reliability, and validity, including the identification and elimination of potential human biases. In practical situations, the data processed by an AI model might diverge from its training dataset; hence, the training data must encompass sufficient diversity to adequately equip the model for real-world applications.
QA testing of the training data becomes essential to verify that the configured parameters of the AI model can perform optimally and align with the desired performance benchmarks. This is executed through a sequence of validation steps, involving feeding the model with training data and evaluating the resultant outcomes or inferences it generates. If these outcomes fall short of the intended standards, developers must reconstruct the model and reprocess the training data.
Just Remember…
While AI in testing and QA brings numerous benefits, it is essential to acknowledge that human expertise is still indispensable. AI is a powerful assistant, but it cannot entirely replace the creativity, intuition and critical thinking of human testers. A successful QA strategy combines the strengths of AI-powered tools with skilled human testers, striking a balance that maximizes efficiency and ensures high-quality software products.
Although automation and AI have brought about a transformation in QA engineering, human proficiency remains a crucial factor in upholding software quality. Traits such as critical thinking, adaptability to changing demands, a user-centered mindset, adeptness in handling intricate situations, and the drive for ongoing enhancement are attributes exclusive to human QA experts. By embracing and recognizing human proficiency, businesses can harness the complete capabilities of automation and AI, thereby providing top-notch software that aligns with user anticipations and endures over time.
As AI technology continues to evolve, it is expected to play an even more significant role in shaping the future of testing and QA. Embracing AI in software testing processes can lead to faster, more reliable releases, and ultimately, enhanced customer satisfaction.
###
