Given how fast technology is changing, we thought it would be interesting to ask IT executives to share their thoughts on the biggest surprises in 2017 and their predictions for 2018.

Here's what they told us about performance and testing:

Rich Kahn, Co-founder and CEO, eZanga

2018 - To stay ahead of ad fraud, the focus needs to be on the user and true validated performance. True validated performance is a metric that’s nearly impossible to fake, unlike other vanity metrics or viewability which has been beaten.

Carlos Sanchez, Engineer, CloudBees

2018 - Monitoring is the new testing. With the current scale, it is not possible or practical to test all possible scenarios and would be more fruitful to monitor for live issues and correct them in short cycles. It requires a DevOps culture and fast iterations.

Simon Knight, Product Manager, TestRail, Gurock

2017 - We have seen continuing focus on Agile methodologies and testers “shifting left,” leading to increased demand for testers with DevOps and testing skills. There have also been ongoing schisms in the testing community with regards to testing terminology, and in particular, the notion that intelligent testing can be automated. Containerization and on-demand environment provisioning continue to provide efficiency gains to the testing process, while blockchain, IoT, and machine learning systems present new testing challenges.

2018 - Testers will augment their capabilities with new tools and approaches to deal with the shifting technology landscape; in particular, using machine learning technology to help analyze telemetry from production systems and provide faster, more effective feedback and improved user experience. Testers with automation and DevOps skills will continue to be in high demand, as testing continues to underpin the delivery of code and infrastructure throughout the entire project lifecycle. And there will still be plenty of room for testers with great analysis and communication skills, since, ultimately, the delivery of awesome software relies on getting the requirements right. As such, tools like Gherkin and BDD will continue to deliver huge benefits in the hands of skilled testers.