Manual testing has become a burden on organisations as developers spend more time on testing than writing code. While coding practices and deployment approaches have modernised, testing is often stuck in the past. Today, Transparity, the UK’s first Microsoft Frontier Partner, is releasing a new research report in partnership with YouGov, exposing the true cost of this lag, alongside the launch of Frontier Quality Engineering, our new AI-powered automation suite designed to solve the problem for good.
Key Research Findings
We partnered with YouGov to ask approximately 500 IT leaders what is really holding their engineering teams back, and the results are eye-opening:
- 76% of UK organisations still rely heavily on manual testing
- Manual testing is slowing release cycles by 60%
- Developers lose 14 to 16 hours every week waiting on tests, pipelines, and internal tooling
- 46% of IT leaders are worried about reputational damage from poor testing
- 44% fear increased security risks from uncaught bugs
- 43% say it is hurting customer satisfaction
Research conducted by YouGov on behalf of Transparity, 2026. Sample: approximately 500 UK IT leaders from organisations with 100–1,000+ employees.
The Hidden Cost of Outdated Testing Methods
The numbers tell a clear story: UK engineering teams are losing nearly two full workdays a week to repetitive admin rather than building market-leading features. And the knock-on effects go well beyond lost developer hours.
When we asked IT leaders what they were most worried about, three concerns dominated:
- Brand damage: reputational harm caused by bugs reaching customers
- Security holes: the risk of undetected vulnerabilities slipping into production
- Unhappy customers: declining satisfaction as quality issues compound
In other words, manual testing isn’t just slowing teams down — it’s actively putting the business at risk.
Accelerating Development with Intelligent Automation
When testing is manual and slow, bugs inevitably slip through the cracks. Catching a defect in production costs 15 times more than finding it during the design phase. Businesses are losing money and risking their competitive advantage simply because their quality assurance cannot keep pace with development.
That’s exactly why we built Frontier Quality Engineering. It isn’t just another testing tool. It’s an engineering-led, agent-accelerated suite that shifts quality assurance earlier in the software lifecycle. By using our AI Agents to assist with test generation, teams can create tests directly from requirements, cutting test creation time by 50%. Predictive defect analysis seeks out high-risk areas before your code even reaches the testing phase, catching 60% more defects early. Plus, our self-healing automation adapts as your user interface changes, slashing maintenance efforts by 65%. Smart test selection ensures your feedback loops take hours, not days.
Walking the Walk
For a major UK insurer, we implemented intelligent test automation and built a reusable testing foundation directly into the delivery process. The results were clear from year one:
- 75% less testing effort needed to support delivery
- 10x improvement in testing efficiency
- 3x more releases delivered by removing testing as a bottleneck
- 57% reduction in QE operating costs
- £1.4 million saved in the first year
And because we use open-source tooling, they own the code from day one. No vendor lock-in. No hidden dependency.
“Frontier Quality Engineering isn’t about chasing the next shiny tech trend. It’s about freeing up your best people to do what they do best: innovate. We take the firefighting out of their hands so they can focus on driving real business value and delivering higher-quality releases, faster. It’s a straightforward approach that delivers real impact, without the usual industry hype.”
Russell Young, Practice Group Director: App Innovation
About the Research
The research was conducted by YouGov on behalf of Transparity in 2026, surveying approximately 500 UK IT leaders and decision‑makers from Corporate and Enterprise organisations (100–1,000+ employees) across sectors including professional services, financial services, healthcare, the public sector and non‑profits.
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Manual testing is no longer a viable strategy at enterprise scale. Explore Frontier Quality Engineering →
