Testing Trends in 2016: Fully Agile or Just Fast Waterfall?
February 08, 2016

Charles Ramsey
Sauce Labs

While 88 percent of organizations say they have adopted agile development, only one in five have fully implemented the five best software testing practices typically associated with a mature agile development process, according to Testing Trends in 2016: A Survey of Software Professionals, commissioned by Sauce Labs and conducted by Dimensional Research.

Development teams continue to adopt agile methodologies like continuous integration (CI) to build better software faster. What is surprising from this report is the revelation that many teams who believe they are practicing an agile testing process are really performing "fast waterfall" instead. This presents a huge opportunity for these teams to continue to improve their processes, increase their use of automation and accelerate development even further.

In addition to revealing the prevalence of fast waterfall development, the findings also reveal that the market continues its adoption of CI, with 77 percent of respondents citing use of the modern development technique within their teams, up from 70 percent from last year.

Importantly, the research also reveals that these teams are beginning to reap the benefits of Continuous Integration, with respondents reporting that implementing CI has resulted in more systematic and rigorous testing, the introduction of more new features for rapid customer feedback and writing code with fewer errors.

Cross-browser testing also remains important with 95 percent of large companies performing some type of cross-browser testing. In addition, Microsoft’s new browser released in August 2015 is already grabbing the attention of developers with almost one-third of respondents saying they test their applications on Microsoft Edge.

Additional key findings from the report include:

Agile is ubiquitous but few have fully embraced testing best practices

■ 67 percent of respondents say their teams deploy new builds at least weekly

■ 46 percent say they want a faster deployment time than they currently have

■ Only one in five say (21 percent) their teams have achieved all five key areas of agile testing maturity, including:
- 23 percent of teams fix bugs right away
- 24 percent iterate small testable requirements rather than waiting for features to be complete ○ 26 percent of teams have more automated testing than manual
- 77 percent of development and QA teams communicate in real-time
- 86 percent of development and QA teams think of themselves as partners

Continuous Integration (CI) changes testing

■ More respondents acknowledged the benefits of CI compared to 2015, which include: more rigorous testing (33 percent), trying more features for customer feedback (32 percent) and writing code with fewer errors (21 percent) in the current report

Cross-Browser Testing remains important, especially for large organizations

■ 95 percent of large companies perform cross browser testing compared to 86 percent of small companies

■ 68 percent of large companies test on older browser versions versus only 60 percent of small companies

■ 32 percent of respondents say they test applications on Microsoft Edge

■ The need for Internet Explorer testing has not decreased in past year

“Development teams are beginning to see real benefits of implementing Continuous Integration (CI),” said Diane Hagglund, Principal Researcher of Dimensional Research. “The report reveals that while certain benefits may not be seen immediately, there are considerable long-term advantages to CI that make its adoption worthwhile.”


Survey Methodology: A global database of software professionals responsible for the quality of web applications was emailed an invitation to participate in a Web survey on the topic of testing trends. A total of 520 individuals completed the survey. Participants included a variety of roles, company sizes, industries and regions. Certain questions were repeated from a similar survey conducted with the same audience one year ago to capture changes.

Charles Ramsey is CEO of Sauce Labs
Share this

Industry News

May 08, 2025

AWS announced the preview of the Amazon Q Developer integration in GitHub.

May 08, 2025

The OpenSearch Software Foundation, the vendor-neutral home for the OpenSearch Project, announced the general availability of OpenSearch 3.0.

May 08, 2025

Jozu raised $4 million in seed funding.

May 07, 2025

Wix.com announced the launch of the Wix Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server.

May 07, 2025

Pulumi announced Pulumi IDP, a new internal developer platform that accelerates cloud infrastructure delivery for organizations at any scale.

May 07, 2025

Qt Group announced plans for significant expansion of the Qt platform and ecosystem.

May 07, 2025

Testsigma introduced autonomous testing capabilities to its automation suite — powered by AI coworkers that collaborate with QA teams to simplify testing, speed up releases, and elevate software quality.

May 06, 2025

Google is rolling out an updated Gemini 2.5 Pro model with significantly enhanced coding capabilities.

May 06, 2025

BrowserStack announced the acquisition of Requestly, the open-source HTTP interception and API mocking tool that eliminates critical bottlenecks in modern web development.

May 06, 2025

Jitterbit announced the evolution of its unified AI-infused low-code Harmony platform to deliver accountable, layered AI technology — including enterprise-ready AI agents — across its entire product portfolio.

May 05, 2025

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, and Synadia announced that the NATS project will continue to thrive in the cloud native open source ecosystem of the CNCF with Synadia’s continued support and involvement.

May 05, 2025

RapDev announced the launch of Arlo, an AI Agent for ServiceNow designed to transform how enterprises manage operational workflows, risk, and service delivery.

May 01, 2025

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd.(link is external) announced that its Quantum Firewall Software R82 — the latest version of Check Point’s core network security software delivering advanced threat prevention and scalable policy management — has received Common Criteria EAL4+ certification, further reinforcing its position as a trusted security foundation for critical infrastructure, government, and defense organizations worldwide.

May 01, 2025

Postman announced full support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), helping users build better AI Agents, faster.

May 01, 2025

Opsera announced new Advanced Security Dashboard capabilities available as an extension of Opsera's Unified Insights for GitHub Copilot.