Digital Testing in Europe

42 Pages·2015·4.08 MB·English

by  Ionut Puiu

Premium Sponsor of the study
Digital Testing in Europe:
Strategies, Challenges & Measuring Success
© PAC 2015
Foreword
Matthias Rasking
Testing Lead, Europe, Africa
and Latin America
Today’s business world is increasingly high-velocity and software-driven. The proliferation of digital technologies - social,
mobile, analytics, cloud, the Internet of Things - is pushing every company to rethink and reinvent its approach to testing.
Digital testing teams globally are under intense pressure to quickly respond to this changing marketplace with high quality
applications that seamlessly serve their end customers and protect their companies’ brand. No longer a supporting capability,
testing is now a driver of strategy and competitive differentiation.
Partnering with PAC, we bring you this study to help you navigate through these challenges and equip your digital testing
strategies to meet the needs of your business. The study prompts every business leader to ask two important questions:
Does our testing approach prepare us for the digital disruption to our business? Does our testing strategy address
exponential growth in volume, velocity and complexity in IT ecosystem while managing security vulnerabilities in this highly
interconnected world? We hope you can use the study findings to provoke discussions within your company to define the
right digital testing resourcing, tooling and investment strategies.
© PAC 2015 2
Accenture - Company Profile (1/2)
To succeed in a high-velocity, software-driven world, Accenture helps companies transform testing into a continuous and
efficient end-to-end quality engineering function. Accenture offers the entire breadth and depth of Testing services across a
broad array of applications, digital technologies and industries delivered under flexible business arrangements to help clients
shape their digital future and lead their industry while delivering an exceptional customer experience. Typical results include
two-fold increase in productivity with as much as 95 percent automation penetration, improved application quality with up to
98 percent reduction in critical defects and more than 50 percent accelerated speed to market all while being able to cut test
operation costs in half.

Accenture’s unique strengths that power our clients’ high performance include:
•  Industry specialization with more than 80 percent testing professionals specialized in an industry coupled with an
extensive experience of serving over 1,000 testing clients across more than 40 industries
•  Pioneering cognitive automation working with Accenture Technology Labs, major research institutes and startups
•  Digital leadership with more than 10 years’ experience delivering innovative solutions for the digital business and
shaping the testing specifications for the industrial Internet of Things
•  Cloud innovations built on a $400 million investment in the industry leading Accenture Cloud Platform
Digital Testing in Europe: Strategies, Challenges & Measuring Success © PAC 2015 3
Accenture - Company Profile (2/2)

•  Powerful alliance ecosystem of more than 150 leading and emerging technology providers including over 30 testing
specific alliances
•  Unparalleled global delivery with more than 31,000 testing professionals across more than 30 delivery centers in 17
countries serving clients in over 120 countries
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 358,000 people
serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all
industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates
with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of
US$31.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2015. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

Digital Testing in Europe: Strategies, Challenges & Measuring Success © PAC 2015 4
Contents
1. Key Findings 6
2. Background & Methodology 9
3. Digital Testing Strategies 14
4. Resourcing Strategies 27
5. Testing Investment Strategies 32
6. Conclusions 38
Appendix 40
Digital Testing in Europe: Strategies, Challenges & Measuring Success © PAC 2015 5
1. Key Findings

Digital Testing in Europe: Strategies, Challenges & Measuring Success © PAC 2015 6
Key Findings
Digital having a major impact on the testing/QA function. More than three quarters of European
businesses agree that the expansion of their digital presence will be their number one IT priority over the
next two years. Testing budget is increasingly being shifted towards supporting new projects, while the
biggest challenges that stakeholders perceive around digital testing relate to supporting the integration of
digital into legacy apps and taking a consistent approach across multiple platforms of engagement.
European businesses are racing to get their digital strategies in place. Only 18% of European
organizations claim to have fully implemented their digital testing strategies, while a further 26% claim to
have formulated them but have not yet rolled them out. But the biggest group is the 35% of business
which plan to put their strategies together in the next 12 months, leaving a rump of 21% that have yet to
make a move – with a large proportion of the laggards based in Southern Europe.
Quality is king. One of the most interesting findings of the study is that the need to improve quality
remains the number one driver for both digital testing projects as well as the testing of existing
applications. There is a greater need for speed in supporting the former, with “accelerating test cycles”
cited as a bigger priority, but quality and a push for greater efficiency in the way that testing is performed
remain the top two goals. There is an increasing focus on end-to-end business process quality.
Diverse digital tactics. There is no single magic formula that European businesses are following to
tackle digital testing. More than 60% of businesses use the same team to test both digital projects and
existing applications, while the majority of companies use an array of tools (in-house, packaged, open
source) and approaches (virtualization, in-production testing) as part of their digital testing strategies.
Automation coverage looks set to expand rapidly in the next 12 months.
Digital Testing in Europe: Strategies, Challenges & Measuring Success © PAC 2015 7
The European Picture
Nordics
UK
- 48% use different resource teams for
- More than one quarter of businesses have
testing digital and existing apps
already fully implemented their digital
- 88% monitor end user experience and
testing strategy.
get user feedback
- 74% expect their testing strategy to
- One third plan to adopt crowdsourcing
become more business process centric
testing solutions in the next 12 months
- Only 34% test digital apps in production,
while 69% use virtualization
Germany
- 65% test digital apps in production, and
Benelux
74% use real device testing.
- More than one third automate testing for - 49% plan to increase investment in
30%-50% of business processes DevOps in 2016
- 67% plan to accelerate investment in - 23% plan to adopt crowdsourcing in
Performance Engineering in 2016 next two years
France Switzerland
- 49% will have digital testing strategy in - 40% of businesses will roll out their
digital testing strategy in the next 12
place in next 12 months
months
- Just 23% currently monitor end user
- 75% cite security testing as a priority
experience and get user feedback
area for testing new development
- Less than 25% have separate teams for
projects
testing digital and existing applications
Italy
Spain
- 47% expect their testing strategy to
- 80% plan to increase investment in Agile
become more applications centric
tools & methodologies in 2016
- 40% claim that their internal testing
- 40% plan to launch digital testing strategy
organizations are fully centralized
in next 12 months
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2. Background & Methodology

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Introduction
The testing and quality assurance function faces a massive So how can the testing function ensure that they get their
challenge as it tackles two important but divergent arms around both of these dynamics?
demands of the business.

Against this background PAC conducted a survey among
Firstly, it is being required to help with the overall efforts of
200 senior testing and IT executives in European
the IT organization in reducing the “lights on” operating
businesses (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the
costs by running testing more efficiently. This means a
Nordic region, Spain and the UK) each with more than 500
greater centralization of testing resources, optimization of
employees. The study explores the following questions:
low-cost delivery teams and the use of standard tools and
methodologies to reduce the amount of testing effort that is
required. •  What are the major challenges and pressure points
facing testing organizations in Europe?
The other challenge is to ensure that the testing and QA •  How is the digital agenda impacting the structure of
function is able to support the digital agenda of the internal testing organizations?
business, where time-to-market outranks cost as the top
•  How are businesses ensuring that they test digital
priority. The need to modernize and innovate areas such as
applications to meet real-world requirements?
mobile applications, self-service websites, social media
analytics and multi-channel e-commerce platforms is •  Is the testing function working more closely with the
hugely important in order to remain competitive and meet business and how is this bing achieved?
the rapidly changing demands of the customer. •  What impact are DevOps and Continuous

Development having on the European testing market?
At the same time, many core elements of the digital
•  What are the investment priorities of testing
strategy are being led by business lines such as sales and
organizations for the next two years in support of their
marketing, who are often circumventing the CIO and
digital strategies?
undertaking their own development projects – often
•  Which tools and resourcing models are testing
leveraging cloud-based tools and platforms.
organizations leveraging to tackle digital?

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