Compuware has announced the findings of a global survey of 400 IT leaders, which reveals that manual testing practices, still in widespread use, are one of the biggest challenges large organizations face as they attempt to accelerate digital innovation.
The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Compuware, examined the processes that organizations have in place to deliver innovation on the mainframe as quickly as in their distributed environments—which are highly reliant on the mainframe.
The survey also explored the methods used to support testing on the mainframe and the challenges businesses face in simultaneously increasing quality, velocity and efficiency during the application development and delivery process.
The survey found that:
77% of organizations find it increasingly difficult to increase quality, velocity and efficiency to meet innovation goals when developing and testing mainframe application code.
92% of respondents said their organization’s mainframe teams are spending more time testing code than was required in the past, due to growing complexity in their application environments.
On average, development teams spend more than half (51%) of their time on testing during the release of a new mainframe application, feature or functionality.
53% of application development managers say the time required to conduct thorough testing is the biggest barrier to integrating the mainframe into Agile and DevOps.
82% said that unless they can automate more test cases, they won’t be able to meet their business’ need for speed, and innovation and customer experiences will suffer.
According to Compuware, the research shows that organizations see test automation as the key to their ability to deliver innovation faster while maintaining quality, but many still use manual testing practices when it comes to the mainframe. Given the central role that the mainframe continues to play in powering modern digital services, these manual testing practices are creating a bottleneck. Ultimately, this is hindering the delivery of innovation and preventing organizations from meeting their business goals.
“As customer demand for a constant cycle of new and improved digital services and experiences continues to grow unabated, speed and innovation have become the rallying call for IT departments across every industry,” said Chris O’Malley, CEO of Compuware. “Automation and the shift to Agile and DevOps are crucial to improving the pace of innovation without compromising quality and efficiency, in response to the always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied customers that organizations are striving to serve as a means to growth.”
The complete research whitepaper, entitled “Test Automation: The Key to Increasing Velocity, Quality and Efficiency,” can be found here. The research is based on a global survey of 400 senior IT leaders responsible for application development in organizations with a mainframe and 1,000+ employees.