Leveraging AI to Augment Automated Software Quality: Assessing Emerging AI Agents and Agentic Workflow

This IDC Perspective discusses how leveraging AI augments automated software testing (ASQ). A primary bottleneck to the speed of software deployments, DevOps, and business velocity is software testing. This document considers the ways in which automated software quality is positioned to incorporate AI and emerging AI agents, agentic workflows, and agentic automation to improve application quality and help optimize execution."Software test automation providers are well poised to incorporate AI/ML and GenAI benefits as well as emerging opportunities with AI agents and agentic workflow. These automated software quality vendors invested early in ML and AI because of opportunities to leverage these capabilities to find anomalies, gain visibility to analyze test data, and to shift test automation from the costs and risks of manual testing," said Melinda Ballou, research director of IDC's Agile ALM, Quality, and Portfolio Strategies Service. "This historical investment enables a foundation from which to build out current and emerging AI capabilities, including emerging AI agents and agentic workflows, and interweave them into test automation products, processes, and workflows. At the same time, there is the pressing requirement to evolve and/or mature needed AI governance frameworks."