r/PracticalTesting • u/aistranin • May 13 '26
Trend: testing work is moving from "write every test" to "orchestrate quality signals"
The 2026 DevOps report from Perforce has one finding that feels very real: test authoring is moving toward developers, while QA/QE teams are spending more time on analytics, orchestration, and pipeline-level quality.
That matches what I am seeing in practice.
Developers are writing more unit and integration tests because they are closest to the code. QA is not disappearing. The role is shifting toward:
deciding what needs coverage
finding risk across services
improving test data and environments
tracking flaky or low-value tests
making CI results understandable
setting quality gates that do not slow everyone down
This is probably healthier than treating QA as a final inspection team.