Preview of A Seismic Shift in Software Testing: Rise of the Machines | Dan Widing | STAREAST 2020

Dan Widing previews his talk at STAREAST on A Seismic Shift in Software Testing: Rise of the Machines. Even sophisticated businesses struggle with software testing. End-to-end (E2E) testing, though vital, has remained a costly and inconsistent method of catching bugs. But there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. Advances in machine learning (ML) have increased test execution speed and stability. Now, technologies are emerging that allow machines to analyze live user traffic to produce test cases—using data to focus E2E testing on what users care about. In time, these technologies will be stitched together to allow machines to own the entire E2E testing process. This seismic shift is extremely valuable, but it will challenge 20 years of conventional thinking. Management practices and processes have revolved around humans using their intuition to decide what is important to test. Given past challenges, most teams find comfort in having tight oversight over that process, and in having large, unwieldy test suites in an attempt to test "everything." Software leaders will need to give up their control of deciding what to test and embrace that data will drive a fundamentally better result. Learn what shifts you'll have to make to take advantage of the rise of the machines.