Manual Effort and Maintenance Debt: The Push Toward Autonomy in Software Testing
DevOps.com, Friday, October 23rd, 2026
Techstrong survey: 43% of testers spend more effort maintaining automated tests than creating coverage; 62% see autonomous testing as key.
AI-assisted development is increasing the volume and pace of software change, but testing teams still spend much of their capacity on manual work and maintaining existing automation.
A Techstrong PulseMeter poll of 137 testing practitioners and decision-makers found 43% spend more effort maintaining automated tests than creating new coverage.
While 62% consider continuous, largely autonomous testing critical or important to future delivery, 42% are actively evaluating or adopting AI-powered testing now.
The author argues the next stage depends on automation that stays reliable as applications change, in a report sponsored by UiPath.