3 Challenges That Make QA That Much Harder

Why do QA stakeholders so often have to choose between speed and risk and what are the challenges stopping them from releasing software both quickly and safely?

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Insufficient Time
A lack of skilled developers
A lack of professional development

With heightened digital transformation in the wake of the global pandemic, companies are releasing software faster and faster. In some industries more than others (for example e-commerce) there is such high competition that issues with software can massively reduce revenue. With such rapid releases, the chance of releasing bugs is greatly increased. 

Leapwork’s 2022 Risk Radar Report found that both CEOs and testers cited faster development cycles, a lack of skilled developers, and a lack of professional development in test automation as key reasons why software isn’t being properly tested.

Insufficient time

As stated, the digitalization that came with the global pandemic has led to more frequent releases. That’s one of the key reasons why people in QA end up releasing software without it being tested properly. 

Too often, QA ends up being a bottleneck, and that in turn creates more time pressures. 

While putting out the fires caused by errors from QA manual testing or maintaining scripted tests, testers have less time to focus on overall testing strategy and create effective tests. 

In addition, you don’t make use of your developer resources – developers divert their time towards testing instead of putting their coding skills to good better use. 

In the current QA environment, the time it will take to perform testing is often underestimated. That, combined with the fact that there are often a lot of last-minute requests for testing that come in during a release, presents another challenge in QA. 

Read more: How to Make QA Challenges Resonate More Clearly with Business People 

A lack of skilled developers 

It’s not only time that’s lacking in QA. There aren’t enough skilled developers to keep up with testing as things stand. Whilst it’s a good sign that more testing is being automated, automation presents its own problems. 

Read more: How No-code Test Automation Closes the Skills Gap in Software Development. 

There’s a certain paradox that comes with the automation of testing processes: it’s basically synonymous with coding. 

Take Selenium, the most popular tool for automated testing. To do automated testing with Selenium, you’re going to need developer resources, resources that are going to cost your business. 

A lack of professional development 

Considering this situation where QA is so reliant on coding resources, another challenge to QA is the lack of professional development for testers. 

Those who are familiar with a company’s business interests and are involved in testing need to be able to use testing tools directly, but at the moment this isn’t the case. 

Underinvestment in testing personnel – not upskilling testers – is a key reason for software not being tested properly. 

The lack of skilled developers and corresponding skills gap in QA (where testers don’t have the ability to code and developers are not familiar with business needs) causes serious challenges to QA teams. 

We’ve made a podcast episode about just that. Listen to it here: Decoding Automation Podcast: How No-code Test Automation Closes the Skills Gap in Software Development. 

Leapwork’s Risk Radar Report found that the skills gap in QA automation remains a big problem in both the US and UK. 

If you want to know more about challenges faced in QA and how they vary across industries, download Leapwork’s full 2022 Risk Radar Report.