We’ll collate good responses to publish in an article.
Here’s mine:
Title: We will continue to see a continuous quality mindset become more integral to our work
Excerpt: Quality and testing roles will continue to blur together as we find our way towards more human and holistic ways to build better products
Description: The world is changing fast and we’re seeing companies struggling and needing to adapt. Testing and Quality isn’t the only area that are facing struggles, I’ve personally seen some similar struggling comments from the UX industry, from a development stand point AI is increasingly getting better at creating the code.
Change will come from many angles, testing and quality is no different. The old ways of approaching shipping quality products. By looking at products as being (part of) a system we will then hopefully be able to explore and find better ways to build good products that also thrive in the market we operate within.
Title: We’ll see regulations around Generative AI usage
Excerpt: Generative AI will continue to be heavily used, and will eventually have governmental oversight, especially in already heavily regulated environments.
Description: Generative AI is being put into many different products. This has led to a few embarrassing (and dangerous) situations where the AI has given bad advice/answers/etc. There have bene some ideas floated for laws around AI already, but as far as I am aware, none of them have been passed.
My prediction is that there will be more incidents, and at least one high profile case where AI will give bad and dangerous advice. This will prompt at least one country’s government to pass regulations for how generative AI can be used. I think this will end up being a new skillset for testers to branch into.
Title: We will continue to see an increase in quality engineering and continuous quality confusion, while Cloud, SRE and Human Centric Testing will appear more in conferences and talks.
Excerpt: . Human Centric Testing will also be more prominent in conferences. Shift-Left and Shift-Right Testing blends more to illustrate the development of Continuous Quality. Testing should seamlessly integrate across the development lifecycle, from planning to production monitoring. Yet so many companies are trying to change their SDLC ‘roman style’ instead of fixing the grassroots of what they are doing increasing cost and waste.
Description: Large testing enterprise delivery brands like Deloitte/Accenture/Tata/Fujitsu etc. Will continue to “transform” TCOEs into QCOE’s in an attempt to stay relevant and future proof - yet somehow still miss the point of continuous quality, people over process and other tool kit skills needed for Continuous Quality. Thinking they are hitting the Agile - Tech start up cadence sweet spot when in fact they are stalling themselves between Waterfall and Fragile on the scale. Decentralised Testing Teams, remote-first and distributed teams will push the need for cloud-based testing platforms and collaboration tools. Real-time testing environments like Digital Twins will enable teams to simulate and test complex systems globally. Even the UK government is moving towards this strategy.
Excerpt: With more products adopting LLMs into their tool set, testers will have to re-learn how to test when working with non-deterministic outputs.
Description: Testing LLMs is a rapidly developing new problem space. Like other functional testing, manual works to a point, but it isn’t scalable. That problem is amplified by the non-deterministic nature of LLMs and the need to repeat many iterations of a test scenario to great the broad picture of the product behaves. This means we need automation.
There are early signs of how the test community will build open source, shareable test automation tools for LLMs, some are even good. However, right now, as much as they help they can also highlight some of the problems you can experience with testing LLMs. Hopefully we will see improvements in this in 2025. I expect though that we will see more testing folk needing to get a deeper understanding of how LLMs work and behave so that they can work closely with their teams to create bespoke test automation.
Excerpt: Things outside software development projects that need testing expertise continue to unfold. We should learn and lean into applying our skills.
Description:
Testing activities are called for in
Low-code application environments like Outsystems, MS PowerPlatform
Standard system environments like SAP4 Hana, Microsoft CE & FO
Security and compliance frameworks like the EU AI Act, EU NIS2, EU DORA et.al.
Title: Transformation of the software tester to quality engineer
Excerpt: As continuous quality becomes a more commonly known concept the job of test engineer is starting to expand with quality engineer tasks.
Description: More and more companies are looking for better quality. As continuous quality becomes better known they realise that they should start implementing quality measures as early as possible. The simplest way that has been found is expanding the job description of software testers. As these employees are already focused on quality they have a good view and approach to expand their area of work.
Title: The Shift from “How” to “What” in Test Automation
Excerpt: As AI handles the implementation details of automation, testers will focus more on strategic test design and choosing what really needs to be automated.
Description: With AI getting better at handling the technical aspects of test automation - writing code, implementing test scripts, maintaining test frameworks - the focus of automation is going to shift dramatically in 2025. Instead of spending most of our time figuring out how to automate something, we’ll be freed up to think more deeply about what we should be automating in the first place.
This shift isn’t just about saving time - it’s about improving the quality of our test automation strategy. When we’re not bogged down in implementation details, we can focus on designing tests that provide real value: identifying critical user journeys, focusing on high-risk areas, and ensuring our automation efforts align with business goals.
The reduced technical burden will also mean that test design skills become more crucial than ever. We’ll need to get better at understanding what tests will give us the most valuable insights, rather than just automating everything we can. This is where human judgment and experience will really shine in making smart decisions about what to automate and why.
Excerpt: Communities will soon be the gateway to networking, opportunities, branding, portfolio building, build in public & much more.
Description:
Ex: MoT itself has led the change. We now have #OpportunitiesForAll.
Communities will be the reputable club of real experts, professionals, recruiting managers, and good testers (job/opportunity seekers).
MCQ-based certifications or knowledge assessments will no longer be valid for measuring your effectiveness as a tester. Your overall presence in your craft will matter a lot. Communities will help elevate that.
