Perforce testing lifecycle spans creation to maintenance

What’s a technology alert in late 2024 without a smattering of AI in it?

It’s a trick question, obviously i.e. there are no tech industry update this year that fail to make mention of AI at some level.

DevOps platform company Perforce has made sure that it doesn’t just mention AI once, the company says it has applied automation intelligence at every stage of the software application development lifecycle from creation to maintenance. The company’s new AI roadmap for Perforce’s continuous testing suite aims to automate complex tests and eliminate manual testing completely.

The strategy covers four AI-driven pillars across the testing lifecycle: test creation, execution, analysis and maintenance, across all main environments: web, mobile and packaged applications.

The result is hoped to remove traditional testing barriers to help testing teams achieve new levels of agility, reliability and breakthrough advancements.

The amount of talent in the testing space as well as the overall continued practice of manual testing — according to Forrester’s Developer Survey, 2023, 43% of testing is still done with manual practices – cannot keep pace with the quality and security needed in the testing space.

To compound this, by 2028 IDC predicts that there will be over one billion new logical applications.

“What we aim to deliver is not just leveraging AI to augment and improve the way testers work today, but we are implementing AI testing that completely changes the way testing works within a business,” said Stephen Feloney, Vice President of Product Management at Perforce. “There are two core areas that we are revolutionising in testing that we know teams will find immediate value in. First, is the reduction of the traditional tools and elimination of frameworks to make testing infinitely more flexible. Secondly, we want to create full automation of test maintenance, which continues to be a blocker to efficient testing and faster releases. Testers should focus on developing test cases instead of worrying about creating and maintaining automated scripts.”

This vision for continuous testing by Perforce will be comprised of four key pillars:

1. AI-Driven Testing Creation: Eliminates the need for traditional testing frameworks and empowers every team member to contribute, accelerating test creation timelines.
2. AI-Driven Test Execution: AI autonomously adapts to real-time changes, ensuring resilience and consistency across all platforms without manual intervention.
3. AI-Driven Test Analysis: Provides immediate insights into test failures, pinpointing the root cause to enable faster resolution and continuous optimisation.
4. AI-Driven Test Maintenance: Eliminates manual test maintenance by continuously adapting to UI, data, or logic changes, ensuring your testing suite is resilient.

Perforce’s vision for AI in software testing aims to democratise software testing by enabling testers of every skill level on every team.

The company insists it will lead to simplified test creation, faster debugging, enhanced collaboration and the elimination of test maintenance.

Perforce’s continuous testing suite offers AI currently with Test Data Pro, which provides test data generation powered by AI.

Source:*IDC, 1 Billion New Logical Applications: More Background, doc #US51953724, April 2024.