Software Testing Education and Industry Needs - Report from the ENACTEST EU Project
Abstract
The evolving landscape of software development demands that software testers continuously adapt to new tools, practices, and acquire new skills. This study investigates software testing competency needs in industry, identifies knowledge gaps in current testing education, and highlights competencies and gaps not addressed in academic literature. This is done by conducting two focus group sessions and interviews with professionals across diverse domains, including railway industry, healthcare, and software consulting and performing a curated small-scale scoping review. The study instrument, co-designed by members of the ENACTEST project consortium, was developed collaboratively and refined through multiple iterations to ensure comprehensive coverage of industry needs and educational gaps. In particular, by performing a thematic qualitative analysis, we report our findings and observations regarding: professional training methods, challenges in offering training in industry, different ways of evaluating the quality of training, identified knowledge gaps with respect to academic education and industry needs, future needs and trends in testing education, and knowledge transfer methods within companies. Finally, the scoping review results confirm knowledge gaps in areas such as AI testing, security testing and soft skills.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.14625,
title = {Software Testing Education and Industry Needs - Report from the ENACTEST EU Project},
author = {Mehrdad Saadatmand and Abbas Khan and Beatriz Marin and Ana C. R Paiva and Nele Van Asch and Graham Moran and Felix Cammaerts and Monique Snoeck and Alexandra Mendes},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.14625},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
* The paper is going to appear in the proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2025). To cite the paper, please check and refer to the PROFES 2025 proceedings