Analysis of “4th Edition Software Testing & Quality Report” by TestRail. Part 1

Trends and Findings from a recent software testing survey.

Non-Medium Members: You can read this article for free on my Substack Newsletter.

The “Software Testing & Quality Report”, conducted by TestRail, gathered 2,751 responses this year. You can download the full report (PDF)

As with any survey conducted by a single company, some bias may exist. However, in this article, I’ll highlight a few objective findings that align closely with the trends and predictions I’ve observed over the years.

Software Testing Trends: Test Automated, Early!

The beginning of the report summary.

“The top future initiatives include:

Increasing test automation (43%): Teams are exploring AI-driven, self-healing tests that reduce maintenance.

Shifting left (39%): QA is moving earlier in the dev cycle to catch defects before they reach production.

Prioritizing better environments and test data (35%): Better infrastructure and reusable data are key to speeding up releases as unreliable environments slow down execution and reduce confidence in results.”

This is not new. Many software teams have been lacking the capability and determination to accomplish it.