APIs take a bite of the QA budget

A major challenge they have in common is their dependency not only on their own software, but the interconnects with upstream and downstream services to which they are connected. So we asked them how much of their testing budget goes on API testing, and how they feel about outsourcing versus homegrown solutions. It turns out that on average nearly 40% of the budgets are being allocated to API testing (with 80% or more reported by two organisations). Justyn Trenner, head of QA Vector Research comments, “This finding underlines the challenge not simply of delivering working solutions but keeping them working, with all the concomitant infrastructure maintenance and testing. Hence we see firms placing more emphasis on their non-production environments and their quality process architecture.” About a third of the spend goes to outsourced solutions, which are perceived to offer greater depth of expertise and more likely to be up to date; some perceive this as overall improving their speed to market. Against that, the main concerns with outsourcing revolve around process and cost control, as well as the time it takes to get an external firm up to speed. For information about future events please click here.