Sustainability in Software Testing: Embracing Greener Practices for a Better Future

The growth and widespread adoption of information technology systems has transformed how we live, work, and communicate. However, this digital revolution comes with a significant environmental cost. Projections suggest that by 2030, IT systems will account for a staggering 20% of the global energy demand. To put this into perspective, the transportation industry currently represents 25% of the global energy consumption. The fact that IT systems are approaching this level of energy consumption highlights the seriousness of the issue at hand.

The production of energy, predominantly from fossil fuel sources, is a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide (CO2), which contributes to climate change. As the IT industry expands, it becomes increasingly important to take responsibility for its environmental impact and actively work towards reducing energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions.

In this context, software assumes a crucial role in tackling the environmental impact of the IT industry, offering potential solutions to combat deforestation and mitigate emissions. However, it is essential to recognise that software alone does not consume energy or emit harmful substances. The challenge lies in how software is developed and utilised.

By optimising resource utilisation in software testing, organisations can achieve several benefits. Firstly, they can reduce the overall cost of testing by minimising the hardware and energy requirements. This can result in significant cost savings, especially for large-scale testing efforts. Secondly, the testing process becomes more efficient and streamlined, enabling faster delivery cycles and shorter time-to-market. Most importantly, by conserving resources, organisations contribute to sustainability efforts by reducing their environmental impact and carbon footprint.

Greener Testing Practices and Techniques

To ensure sustainable software testing, organisations can adopt various greener testing practices and techniques that focus on minimising the environmental impact of testing activities. These practices aim to improve testing efficiency and, if properly deployed, will help reduce energy consumption without compromising the quality of the testing carried out. Here are some key strategies (some of which you will already be utilising) to consider and look at through a carbon lens:

Risk Based Testing: By prioritising tests using a risk-based testing approach, organisations can allocate their resources more efficiently by focusing on critical functionality, high-risk areas, and test cases that are most likely to uncover defects. This means investing more time and effort in testing scenarios that have a higher impact on the software’s functionality, stability and security.
Shift Left: Defect prevention and early detection are key practices to implement for sustainable software testing. By prioritising these strategies, organisations can significantly reduce energy consumption, minimise waste, and enhance the overall efficiency of the software development process. Effective static testing, root cause analysis of defects and effective lessons learnt/retrospective processes facilitate this.
Test Case Optimisation: Reducing test case redundancy is fundamental to greener testing. Organisations can streamline the testing process by analysing and eliminating redundant or overlapping test cases, reducing resource consumption, and minimising energy usage. This optimisation ensures that only essential and unique test cases are executed, saving time and energy.
Test Execution Sequencing: Optimising the sequence in which test cases are executed can contribute to energy efficiency. By prioritising tests that require similar resources or configurations, organisations can minimise the need for frequent setup changes and reduce energy consumption associated with system reboots or reconfigurations. This approach helps maximise the utilisation of resources and minimise unnecessary energy consumption.
Energy-Efficient Testing Approaches: Organisations can adopt specific testing approaches to reduce energy consumption. For example, leveraging virtualised testing environments allows multiple virtual machines to share physical resources, optimising resource utilisation and minimising energy waste. Similarly, utilising cloud-based testing platforms provides scalable and on-demand infrastructure, enabling organisations to allocate resources efficiently and reduce energy consumption during testing.
Test Environment Management: Efficient management of test environments can significantly impact energy consumption. By closely monitoring and managing the availability and utilisation of testing resources, organisations can prevent resource wastage and minimise energy consumption. This includes implementing automated provisioning and deprovisioning processes, ensuring resources are only active when required.
Energy aware: As an industry we have introduced a number of non-functional testing levels such as performance, security and user experience testing. We now need to think about the environmental impact of the application, it’s potential energy usage over the lifetime of the application and how we can test that this is minimised.
Continuous Testing and Test Automation: Implementing continuous testing and test automation practices can improve overall testing efficiency and reduce energy consumption. Organisations can optimise resource utilisation, minimise manual effort, and conserve energy by automating repetitive and time-consuming testing tasks. Continuous testing practices enable the early detection of defects, reducing the need for extensive retesting and its associated energy consumption.

By incorporating these greener testing practices and techniques, testing organisations can contribute to sustainable software development practices, minimising energy consumption and reducing their environmental impact.

In order to help organisations evaluate where they are we have developed a Sustainable Software Testing survey that reports at a high level on an organisation’s progress in this area and will continue to evolve it to help align the results with the impact on one’s carbon footprint.

Final thoughts

As the software industry continues to evolve, integrating sustainable IT principles into testing becomes increasingly important. Organisations that prioritise sustainable practices in software testing not only contribute to a greener planet but also gain a competitive advantage, as they can deliver high-quality software efficiently while minimising their environmental impact.

Start looking at what you do and how you do it using a carbon lens and identify some things you can change and measure. It may not be possible to make highly accurate objective measures immediately, but measures can show that you are moving in the right direction. You can therefore make informed decisions and demonstrate progress.

As a community of people in the software testing space, if we all look at what we do and how we use IT through a carbon lens we can all make changes (big and small) that will help to improve our organisation’s carbon footprint.

At Experimentus, in collaboration with Dominic Plummer, Head of Sustainable Quality Engineering, Enterprise Engineering, and Technology at NatWest, we have been actively engaged in exploring ways to enhance the sustainability of software testing and establish effective measurement techniques.

As a result of our collaborative efforts, we have developed a free survey that enables you to quickly assess, visualise, and establish a baseline for the level of sustainability within their software testing practices.