Tricentis ‘Quality Transformation Report’ reveals untested code is leading to increased organizational risks, rising reliance on AI to deliver quality software at speed

AUSTIN, TX–May 13, 2025 –Tricentis, a global leader in continuous testing and quality engineering, today released the findings of its global 2025 Quality Transformation Report. The inaugural survey exposes the growing challenges in delivering quality software, as well as dissonance among today’s technology leaders and professionals around how to prioritize speed, quality, and cost in today’s AI-driven economy.

The Quality Transformation Report, based on a survey of over 2,700 global CIOs, CTOs, VPs of engineering, DevOps and quality assurance leaders, and software developers across various industries, including public sector, energy and utilities, manufacturing and financial services, finds:

Software quality falters amid competing organizational pressures: As organizations chase productivity gains from generative AI, teams are overwhelmingly focused on improving delivery speed (45%) over enhancing software quality (13%). The majority (63%) of global organizations ship code changes without fully testing them, citing the need to expedite release cycles (46%) and accidental slips of untested code (40%) as driving factors.
Quality gaps are costing organizations millions: Nearly half (42%) of global organizations believe poor software quality costs them $1M or more annually, with financial services firms reporting the steepest losses.
Misalignment between developers and leadership is blocking quality gains: Poor communication between software development and quality assurance teams (33%) and disconnect between leadership and software development teams (28%) prove to be top barriers to achieving higher quality software.
Agentic AI looks set to help plug productivity, quality, and performance gaps: The majority of organizations surveyed (82%) report excitement about the possibility of AI agents to assume their monotonous tasks in the development and delivery cycle, freeing up time for more strategic and rewarding work. More broadly, 84% believe AI will help software development teams deliver software under increasingly tight deadlines.
AI is gaining executive trust to drive critical high-stakes decisions: 9 in 10 CIOs, CTOs, and software delivery teams are confident in AI’s ability to autonomously make software release decisions.
Enterprises are gaining clarity on generative AI’s business impact: Almost 90% of respondents say their organizations can effectively quantify the ROI from generative AI within their software development lifecycles.
Strikingly, almost all (99.89%) respondents think autonomous testing will be useful for QA: Areas where technology leaders and software development professionals expect to see the most impact include improving software speed overall (28%), overall quality (28%), analyzing test results (25%), and test case maintenance (23%).

“Recent software outages due to unchecked or untested code changes showcase just how critical high-quality software is to the wider organizational ecosystem, and having the right balance of quality and speed to serve developing technological needs is paramount,” said Kevin Thompson, Chief Executive Officer, Tricentis. “As AI continues to evolve, we believe tech leaders and practitioners need to define what quality means for their organization to strike the right balance between quality, speed, and cost, while implementing comprehensive testing strategies to deliver better business outcomes.”

As outlined in the report, the paradigm shift taking place in software development, accelerated by AI, presents both obstacles and opportunities for leaders and practitioners to capitalize on innovative solutions that help address the ongoing discussion related to speed and quality.

Tricentis provides a full suite of AI-powered quality engineering solutions that address critical aspects of the software delivery process for enterprise organizations. The full Tricentis 2025 Quality Transformation Report is available to download here. To sign up for the webinar on May 29, register here.

Additional Resources:

Blog: Quality gaps cost organizations millions, report finds
Webinar: What’s holding teams back from releasing high quality software? Insights from our latest research
Website: Tricentis Copilot
Website: AI-powered quality solutions

Methodology

Tricentis conducted the Quality Transformation Report via a global survey fielded in March of 2025, with 2,750 respondents from 10 countries and five industry verticals. Respondents included CIOs, CTOs, general managers, VPs of engineering, VPs of applications, VPs of IT, VPs of quality assurance, IT practitioners, DevOps leaders, quality assurance leaders, and software developers. This report examined top trends and developments in software development, software testing, software quality, DevOps, and AI.

About Tricentis

Tricentis is a global leader in continuous testing and quality engineering. The Tricentis AI-based, continuous testing portfolio of products provides a new and fundamentally different way to perform software testing. An approach that’s totally automated, fully codeless, and intelligently driven by AI. It addresses both agile development and complex enterprise apps, enabling enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation by dramatically increasing software release speed, reducing costs, and improving software quality. Widely credited for reinventing software testing for DevOps, cloud, and enterprise applications, Tricentis has been recognized as a leader by all major industry analysts, including Forrester, Gartner, and IDC. Tricentis has more than 3,000 customers, including the largest brands in the world, such as McKesson, Allianz, Telstra, Dolby, and Vodafone. To learn more, visit https://www.tricentis.com.

Media Contacts
Tricentis
Courtney Cantwell
c.cantwell@tricentis.com