Paul is a well-known consultant and speaker in the UK. In 2010 he won the Euro STAR Testing Excellence Award and in 2013 he won the inaugural TESTA Lifetime Achievement Award. He won the ISTQB Testing Excellence Award in 2018. His interests include professionalism in testing, understanding how software professionals think and communicate, and the application of ML/AI in software development.
“(In the context of Testing, DevOps, Agile, LowCode) Where will benefits of ML/AI come from?”
Wherever you look, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence seems to be making inroads. There’s lots of talk of ML/AI in testing but it’s been mostly limited to analysing test execution statistics and bug reports. The tool vendors are, as ever, focusing on the low hanging fruit, so to speak.
You might have heard of Chat GPT which has caused quite a stir, mostly as an alternative to Google search and the belief that you can ‘ask it anything’. But there are now over twenty alternative ‘generative pre-trained transformer’ products. Can they be of use to software professionals, other than to generate CV covering letters?
The other, main prospect is the use of ML/AI in support of requirements, design and testing activities. I suggest this is where there are real opportunities. To date, we have used software to automate clerical, repetitive activities and record tabular content. We’ll need new tools that capture data throughout the software lifecycle, integrate it and then use ML/AI to provide insights that support our thinking, not just logistics.