AI Is Outpacing Quality — Sembi's Inaugural Software Quality Pulse Report Calls for Integrated Quality Operations
Software quality has always been a discipline defined by the tension between speed and rigour — the faster teams ship, the harder it becomes to maintain the testing, security, and governance standards that determine whether software is actually safe to put in front of users. AI-driven development has stretched that tension to a breaking point. When more than half of all code being produced is now AI-generated or AI-assisted, the volume, velocity, and risk profile of what quality assurance teams must validate has transformed faster than the processes and tools designed to validate it. Sembi, the premier SaaS portfolio for testing and security solutions, has released its inaugural Software Quality Pulse Report — a global study drawing on insights from nearly 4,000 software development and delivery leaders — with findings that reveal a systemic misalignment between development velocity and quality maturity.
The report's central thesis is that the AI era has made the traditional, siloed model of software quality — where QA, security, and development operate as separate functions with separate goals and separate tooling — structurally inadequate. The organisations that manage quality and risk effectively in this environment will be those that have adopted integrated quality operations: a unified, intelligence-driven approach where testing, security, and development are aligned around shared goals, shared visibility, and shared accountability. The report is an expanded continuation of TestRail's previous four Software Testing and Quality Reports, now incorporating insights across the full Sembi portfolio of enterprise quality and security brands.
"AI has redefined what 'quality' means in software development. Teams are no longer testing for deterministic outcomes — they're evaluating probabilistic systems. Because of that, you can't rely on traditional testing approaches. Quality becomes continuous and shared across teams, which requires new strategies, stronger governance, and much closer alignment among QA, engineering, and security."
— Judy Bossi, Vice President of Product, Sembi
The Seven Key Findings — What the Data Reveals About the State of Software Quality in 2026
The Software Quality Pulse Report examines key trends across software testing, application security, and the growing convergence between QA and security teams. The findings paint a consistent picture across seven major insights: AI has changed what quality means and how much work it generates, but the processes, integrations, and accountability structures that would allow organisations to manage that work effectively have not kept pace.
AI Code Generation Is Central — and Dramatically Increasing Testing Demands
With 53% of code now AI-generated or AI-assisted, QA teams are being asked to validate software that was not written the way their processes and tools were designed to handle. More than one-third of teams report AI-driven development has increased testing demands by 26–50% or more. 61% report moderate to dramatic increases in testing demand driven by AI-generated code — a volume challenge that existing team structures and tooling are struggling to absorb. Critically, only 17% say AI-driven testing tools have had a significant positive impact, with most gains remaining incremental.
QA and Security Remain Misaligned — Despite Widespread Recognition of the Gap
Fewer than 35% of respondents report strong alignment between QA and security priorities — yet 68% say improved alignment would be highly valuable. This gap between intent and execution is where defect leakage, security gaps, and release risk accumulate. Teams ranked quality, security, and compliance as their top release priorities, but with less than 2% fully integrated with their DevOps pipelines, most lack the operational infrastructure to deliver on those stated priorities. The gap between wanting to ship with quality and having the processes to do it is the defining operational challenge the report surfaces.
Automation Is Widespread But Integration Is Not — The 57% Automation Paradox
Teams report that 57% of their tests are currently automated — a significant level of automation investment. Yet with less than 2% of organisations fully integrating QA tools within their DevOps pipelines, the automation is operating in partial isolation from the development workflow it is supposed to support. Automation that is not connected to development, CI/CD, and security signals in real time produces results that inform decisions too slowly to prevent defect leakage. This is the automation paradox the report identifies: substantial investment in automation, minimal integration, and therefore limited real-world impact on release quality and risk.
Diffused Release Risk Ownership — No Clear Accountability for Shipping Decisions
When asked who owns final release risk decisions, respondents gave highly distributed answers — with "shared" responsibility ranking highest at just 18.5% and no single function claiming clear authority. This diffused accountability leads to slower decisions and increased release risk: when everyone shares responsibility, no one has the clear mandate or the unified visibility to make a confident, well-informed call. The report identifies aggregating QA, security, and coverage signals into a unified dashboard as the structural intervention that makes confident, complete release decisions operationally possible.
"Over the past year, we've all seen just how quickly AI is changing the pace of software development. Teams are moving faster than ever, but that speed is putting real pressure on how quality and risk are managed. Our research shows just how difficult it's becoming to keep testing, security, and delivery aligned."
— Christian Beatty, Vice President, Sembi
What Integrated Quality Operations Requires — The Report's Prescriptions
The Software Quality Pulse Report does not simply document the problem — it articulates what integrated quality operations looks like in practice, and what organisational and technical changes are required to move from fragmented, siloed quality management toward a unified model capable of keeping pace with AI-driven development velocity.
QA, security, and DevOps signals unified in a single dashboard — enabling release decisions based on complete context rather than fragmented reports from disconnected tools, eliminating the diffused accountability that the report identifies as a primary source of release risk.
Test management, CI/CD, security scanning, and defect tracking connected in real time — moving from the 26% current integration rate toward the continuous, automated quality pipeline that AI-scale development demands but that only 2% of organisations currently operate.
QA and security aligned around shared goals, shared metrics, and clear ownership of release risk decisions — replacing the 18.5% "shared responsibility" model that currently produces the slowest, least confident release decisions across the industry.
The Sembi Portfolio — Six Brands, One Quality and Security Platform
Sembi empowers more than 20,000 customers worldwide through a portfolio that unifies six industry-leading brands: TestRail, Xray, Testmo, Ranorex, Kiuwan, and PreEmptive. Together, they deliver the testing, automation, application security, and code analysis capabilities that the integrated quality operations model requires — spanning test case management, test execution, continuous vulnerability detection, code quality analysis, and runtime application protection in a single, connected SaaS portfolio.
Key Takeaways
Sembi's inaugural Software Quality Pulse Report — drawing on nearly 4,000 global leaders — finds that 53% of code is now AI-generated or AI-assisted, with more than one-third of teams reporting 26–50%+ increases in testing demand and only 17% saying AI testing tools have had significant impact.
A critical QA and security misalignment persists: fewer than 35% report strong alignment between QA and security priorities, 68% say improved alignment would be highly valuable, and less than 2% have fully integrated QA tools within their DevOps pipelines — despite 57% of tests being automated — creating the intent-to-execution gap where defect leakage and security risk accumulate.
Release risk ownership is critically diffused — no single function claims clear authority, with "shared" responsibility highest at just 18.5% — producing the slow, under-informed release decisions that translate directly into production quality and security failures.
The report calls for integrated quality operations — unifying testing, security, and development into an intelligence-driven system with shared visibility, deep DevOps integration, and clear accountability — as the structural response to AI-driven development velocity. Download the full report free at sembi.com.
The Software Quality Pulse Report arrives at a moment when the gap between development velocity and quality maturity has become operationally consequential. When more than half of code is AI-generated, testing demands have increased by 26–50% or more for a third of teams, and less than 2% of organisations have fully connected their QA tooling to the delivery pipeline, the risk is not hypothetical — it is the difference between software that ships securely and reliably, and software that ships fast and fails unpredictably. The integrated quality operations model that Sembi advocates is not a transformation project for the future. It is the operational requirement for managing quality and risk at the pace and scale the AI era demands, today.
To download the full Software Quality Pulse Report and explore Sembi's portfolio of enterprise quality and security solutions, visit sembi.com.