AI in Testing 2026: Tool, Colleague, Test Object
AI writes tests, explores apps and generates test data. And it becomes a test object itself. Five fields that really matter for testing with GenAI in 2026.
Testing Fundamentals & Test Design
Software testing creates transparency about whether a system meets business expectations and behaves reliably under realistic conditions. This topic connects testing fundamentals with systematic test design, from objectives, levels, and techniques to reviews, exploratory testing, and traceable test cases.
The articles, podcast episodes, and foundation pages show how teams translate risks into useful test ideas, select appropriate techniques, and communicate results clearly. They support people who are entering testing, refining an established approach, or building a shared vocabulary across a team. The focus is not on producing the largest possible number of tests, but on generating relevant information for better quality decisions.
Foundations
Articles
Software Testing of and with AI
Explore Software Testing with AI and discover the synergies, opportunities, and challenges of this innovative technology in software development.
How Agile Development is Changing Testing
Agile development is transforming software testing methods. Learn about Agile Testing Methods and redefine quality assurance in 2025 projects.
Security Tests with Static Analysis
Enhance your code's security with static analysis security testing to detect flaws early and ensure quality software development.
The Migration Test Process
Ensure your migrated system performs equivalent to the legacy system with effective migration testing. Optimize success for software migration testing.
Requirements Engineering & Software Test
Enhance your software projects with quality requirements engineering and effective software testing to minimize errors.
Podcast Episodes
Why Complete Coverage Doesn't Guarantee the Absence of Errors
100% branch coverage achieved—and yet bugs were still found. What this says about code coverage as a metric, and why assertions are crucial.
AI as a Tester: How LLM-as-Judge Works
Automating LLM tests, even though no result is guaranteed? It’s possible—if you redefine determinism and use LLMs as judges.
How Stiftung Warentest tests
A product test runs long before the magazine appears, with independent purchase and blind tests. Multiple checks mirror software testing.
Structured Exploratory Testing Strategies That Work
Exploratory testing is not just clicking around randomly. Here is how scoping, timeboxing, and risk focus turn it into a sharp quality tool.
Formal methods in software quality
Formal methods sound like an ivory tower, but they provide what testing alone can never do: mathematical proof of correct behavior.
AI-generated test cases in a regulated environment
AI-generated test cases in the medical technology environment: how a RAG system remains regulatory clean without tool validation.
Soccer analysis meets software testing
600 production runs, one workflow, not a single test for it: How process mining shows what regression testing really needs to cover.
AI-supported test case determination
Specialist departments hardly test at all because test knowledge is missing in the teams. An AI assistant delivers cases to ISO standards.
Exploratory Ensemble Testing
Two years of exploratory ensemble testing in a real project: What the method brings, where it gets stuck and why testing is suddenly fun.
Performance Testing is not Load Testing
Performance testing is not the same as load testing, and running capacity tests every sprint is wasting cloud budget on the wrong problem.
Dynamic analysis for embedded systems
Measuring embedded code coverage without instrumentation: Why hardware tracing in system testing solves the observability that unit testing alone can't deliver.
What if Da Vinci had been a software tester?
Testing is both art and science. Da Vinci used curiosity, imperfection, and simplicity as tools. So can testers who want real impact.
Practical software testing with Java
From unit tests to exploratory testing, only some Java tools really count in practice. How Maven controls the whole test procedure reliably.
Better collaboration with model-based testing
Model-based testing kills two birds with one stone: better requirements and ready-made test cases from one workshop.
Pains and Hypes of Software Testing
Testers keep losing the value argument not because their work is wrong, but because they pitch defects instead of business outcomes.
Using the board game for test design
How do you create a board game that delivers real test cases? A team built it - and learned more about testing than expected.
Quality is no coincidence
Living quality as an attitude, not just writing test cases: Why it makes the difference and what 150 podcast episodes teach about it.
When Property-Based Testing Pays Off, and When It Doesn't
A million generated test cases sound great, until every case places a billed phone call. Where property-based testing pays off and where it gets expensive.
Static analysis with AI
Static analysis throws up thousands of findings and AI fixes two thirds reliably. What that means for old code bases and where it stops.
Fuzzy Testing
Fuzzing sounds like chaos but is a method that reveals security gaps systematically. Targeted test data beats pure randomness in practice.
The Forgotten Power of Test Design Techniques
Most testers know test design techniques but rarely use them. Four groups, five techniques, and the right selection logic change that.
Implementation as a test oracle
If you calculate target values for 2,500 signals manually, you lose the connection. How a reference implementation as a test oracle solves this.
Testing microservices
From a sluggish monolith with hours of end-to-end testing to fast microservices: Which test strategy really works for this.
Testing web components vs. UI elements
280 UI tests in under three minutes without a backend are possible with isolated UI testing. Mocked API responses keep the suite stable.
Test design with AI
Many people know test design methods, but hardly anyone uses them. Why this is the case and how AI closes this gap without making you stop thinking.
Is Mutation Testing Worth the Runtime? Where It Pays Off
Every mutant reruns your test suite, and that gets slow fast. How incremental analysis in PIT and a focus on core logic make mutation testing pay off.
How to Pick a Test Design Technique Without Learning 30
25 to 30 test design techniques exist, five cover most cases in practice. How to pick the right one by problem type, risk level and team skills.
Test infrastructure at device manufacturers
700.000 lines of code in a combi steamer, 2,000 test cases per night: how test automation really works in device development.
Test design with model-based testing
Model-based testing sounds good but often fails on the gap between model and actual test. A two-phase approach closes exactly that gap.
Where Formal Methods Get Used, and What a Proof Costs
Type systems, Windows drivers, payment rollbacks, the seL4 kernel: where formal methods run in practice, and why a proof can cost ten lines per line of code.
Test data and data processes
Production data often only covers 70% of test cases. How to systematically test data processes and get business and IT on the same page.
Test technique for ZDF
90% of failed tests are real bugs, not automation errors. Why no project can do without manual testing.
Acceptance test-driven LLM development
LLMs testing like a pro: Acceptance Test Driven Development meets fine-tuning - creating a measurable quality process for AI systems.
Test pyramid - a critical look
Lots of unit tests, high test coverage, but still bugs. Why the test pyramid is often used incorrectly and when other approaches make more sense.
Acceptance Testing
Anyone who plans acceptance testing shortly before delivery is testing quality at the most expensive time. What early integration really brings.
Court expert
Software acceptance usually checks functions only and nothing beyond that narrow scope. Whether up to 12,000 hidden bugs count as normal.
ChatGPT for testing
Using ChatGPT for test cases, test data and exploratory ideas: What really works, where caution is advised and why prompting matters.
Properties Based Testing
Millions of test cases generated automatically instead of laboriously written by hand: What property-based testing is and what its limitations are.
Automotive testing
In automotive testing a windshield wiper already counts as a safety-critical system. What that means for test methods and for standards.
Model-based testing (MBT)
Model-based testing is considered complex and formal. Boxes, arrows and a flowchart are enough to uncover requirement gaps early on and generate test cases.
Test Intelligence
Finding 80% of errors in 1% of the time: How test impact analysis and test gap analysis are fundamentally changing testing.
Sociable testing
Why are hundreds of unit testers created, but the software still doesn't run? Because isolated tests alone do not prove a feature - and that is the problem.
Gamification in testing
Manual testing is no fun, and risk analyses usually end up unread in a drawer somewhere. Gamification solves both with concrete formats.
When customers are colleagues
How do you test an app that drivers use while driving without distracting them? Test drives, surveys and slow rollouts on 20% of the fleet.
Shift Left
If you only check quality during testing, you've already lost. How unit tests, IDE plugins and contract testers make errors visible earlier.
Cypress
Cypress instead of Selenium: Why real browser testing is more stable, how component testing saves the test pyramid and where the tool's limits lie.
Will AI replace the test engineer?
From carpenter to agile engineering coach: How a career change and a book about system testing sparked an entire career in testing.
Automatic test case selection for regression testing
6.5 hours of test runtime, reduced to 10-15 minutes: How test case selection across C++ and Java makes it possible.
Game Testing
500.000 players, a 25-year-old game, weekly patches: how game testing really works and why exploratory testing is indispensable.
Reviews
Reviews are considered cumbersome, but they are not. Which types really help, which pitfalls slow teams down and how a first review succeeds.
Quality assurance in agile projects
Quality in agile projects is not created at the back in acceptance testing, but at the very front in dialog. Why this is the case and what often goes wrong.