The world has been hit by a novel disease COVID-19 also known as the coronavirus in 2019. The pandemic is said to have affected more than 6.42 million people with wide-spread transmissions in 214 countries. Many countries have declared lockdown and state of emergency, which has caused businesses to shut down, and also affected our daily lives a great deal. Similarly, IT giants and the software testing industry have also faced a global crunch. There is a major impact on the hardware business, yet the software industry is also expected to be affected and slowed down as the pandemic spreads globally.
Changing Lifestyles
But thanks to remote working, the impact on software business is not that immense as compared to other business verticals. Ever since the escalating situation of the coronavirus spreading around the world, many organizations have laid-off their employees, some of them are still deducting a certain percentage from their salaries and many have encouraged their staff to work from home. This situation has provided IT and software testing companies a chance to test the concepts of remote working in the future and some might be useful until the dust settles down.
Remote Working is a Ray of Hope
Remote working helps businesses in restoring and maintaining their operational capacity and providing necessary services during and after natural disasters. This is especially helpful in where people need to maintain social distancing and workplaces are inaccessible. The capacity of distributed teams can be affected due to lack of designated workspace at home, however, it is a blessing for teams to be able to continue working without having to visit their offices in person.
Test Management Tools to Manage Distributed Teams
Regardless of the current situation, coordinating and managing distributed testing teams can be extremely daunting. When software testing gets disconnected from other development processes, its outcomes include slower releases and project failures. Hence, it is extremely important for distributed teams to ensure that tests are being run effectively and that defects are also being addressed in a timely manner. Test management tools come in handy for remote teams and support them in meeting tight deadlines.
The New Normal
Since businesses have been caused to shut down and have faced huge losses in the past six months due to the pandemic COVID-19, it is crucial to focus on what is possible in the current situation. Where employees cannot make it to their offices due to the fear of spreading the virus and are supposed to practice social distancing, it is necessary to be prepared for the new normal. Enterprises have promoted remote and distributed teams working from the comfort of their home in the past, yet it seems to continue for a long period of time in the future. So, enterprises provide their teams with all the necessary infrastructure and tools that will help them improve their productivity in these uncertain times. Since organizations are already using continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) approaches to ensure quality and speed simultaneously, these will also be helpful in meeting the customer demands in the current pandemic situation. With the help of test management tools, QA managers can ensure that their QA and development teams are on the same page and that they are performing their tasks responsibly without any time delays. It allows them to manage their teams more effectively.
