Effectiveness of artificial intelligence for test prioritisation in distributed systems of Ukrainian and international software development
Andrii ZadorozhniiThe growing complexity of distributed Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) systems, and the limited scalability and stability of conventional heuristic methods for test prioritisation, necessitates the investigation of alternative methods of optimising the testing process. The purpose of this research was to determine the features of using AI methods for test prioritisation and to suggest an approach for integrating AI methods into automated testing processes. The research involved a comparative analysis of intelligent and hybrid methods for test prioritisation in distributed systems, using the APFD and APFDc metrics. The results of the study show the advantage of intelligent and hybrid approaches to test prioritisation over conventional heuristics. The random approach to test prioritisation proved to be the least efficient, achieving an APFD of approximately 0.51. More sophisticated heuristic approaches increased the APFD to around 0.62. Population-based methods increased the APFD to approximately 0.72. Using machine learning methods increased the APFD to about 0.76. The best results were achieved by using hybrid methods that combined machine learning and PSO. The APFD in this case reached 0.81, and the execution time for test suites decreased by nearly 45%. These results confirm that the integration of AI methods into the testing process is suitable for distributed CI/CD systems. The results of this study can be used by software developers, QA teams and engineers to optimise the testing processes in distributed systems
References
- Amalfitano, D., Faralli, S., Hauck, J.C., Matalonga, S., & Distante, D. (2023). Artificial intelligence applied to software testing: A tertiary study. ACM Computing Surveys, 56(3), article number 58. doi: 10.1145/3616372.
- Anwar, R., & Bashir, M.B. (2023). A systematic literature review of AI-based software requirements prioritization techniques. IEEE Access, 11, 143815-143860. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3343252.
- Baccour, E., Mhaisen, N., Abdellatif, A.A., Erbad, A., Mohamed, A., Hamdi, M., & Guizani, M. (2022). Pervasive AI for IoT applications: A survey on resource-efficient distributed artificial intelligence. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 24(4), 2366-2418. doi: 10.1109/COMST.2022.3200740.
- Banala, S., Panyaram, S., & Selvakumar, P. (2025). Artificial intelligence in software testing. In P. Chelliah, R. Venkatesh, N. Natraj & R. Jeyaraj (Eds.), Artificial intelligence for cloud-native software engineering (pp. 237-262). London: IGI Global. doi: 10.4018/979-8-3693-9356-7.ch009.
- Birchler, C., Khatiri, S., Derakhshanfar, P., Panichella, S., & Panichella, A. (2023). Single and multi-objective test cases prioritization for self-driving cars in virtual environments. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 32(2), article number 28. doi: 10.1145/3533818.
- Burachynskyi, A., & Shantyr, A. (2025). Overview of artificial intelligence application methods in software development. Informatica, 49(28), 59-72. doi: 10.31449/inf.v49i28.8694.
- Enemosah, A. (2025). Enhancing DevOps efficiency through AI-driven predictive models for continuous integration and deployment pipelines. International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews, 6(1), 871-887. doi: 10.55248/gengpi.6.0125.0229.
- Farah, J. (2021). Machine learning and AI in software testing automation: Enhancing performance in distributed network systems. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 31(12), 45-60. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27301.61925.
- Islam, M., Khan, F., Alam, S., & Hasan, M. (2023). Artificial intelligence in software testing: A systematic review. In Proceedings of the TENCON 2023-2023 IEEE region 10 conference (TENCON) (pp. 524-529). Chiang Mai: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/TENCON58879.2023.10322349.
- Khaliq, Z., Farooq, S.U., & Khan, D.A. (2022). Artificial intelligence in software testing: Impact, problems, challenges and prospect. ArXiv. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2201.05371.
- Khrabatyn, R.I., Bandura, V.V., Zikraty, S.V., & Romanyshyn, T.L. (2024). Automatic generation of test cases based on system behaviour models using artificial intelligence to improve the quality of software products. Scientific Bulletin of Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, 2(57), 78-85. doi: 10.31471/1993-9965-2024-2(57)-78-85.
- Kumar, S. (2023). Reviewing software testing models and optimization techniques: An analysis of efficiency and advancement needs. Journal of Computers, Mechanical and Management, 2(1), 32-46. doi: 10.57159/gadl.jcmm.2.1.23041.
- Mahdieh, M., Mirian-Hosseinabadi, S.H., & Mahdieh, M. (2022). Test case prioritization using test case diversification and fault-proneness estimations. Automated Software Engineering, 29(2), article number 50. doi: 10.1007/s10515-022-00344-y.
- Mohapatra, P.S. (2025). Intelligent assurance: Artificial intelligence-powered software testing in the modern development lifecycle. London: Deep Science Publishing. doi: 10.70593/978-93-7185-046-9.
- Nama, P., Meka, N.H., & Pattanayak, N.S. (2021). Leveraging machine learning for intelligent test automation: Enhancing efficiency and accuracy in software testing. International Journal of Science and Research Archive, 3(1), 152-162. doi: 10.30574/ijsra.2021.3.1.0027.
- Okrushko, D., & Kashtalian, A. (2023). System of distribution and evaluation of tasks in the software development process. Computer Systems and Information Technologies, 2, 86-97. doi: 10.31891/csit-2023-2-12.
- Pan, R., Bagherzadeh, M., Ghaleb, T.A., & Briand, L. (2022). Test case selection and prioritization using machine learning: A systematic literature review. Empirical Software Engineering, 27(2), article number 29. doi: 10.1007/s10664-021-10066-6.
- Pandhare, H.V. (2025). Future of software test automation using AI/ML. International Journal of Engineering and Computer Science, 13(5), 27159-27182. doi: 10.18535/ijecs/v14i05.5139.
- Prity, F.S. (2023). Enhancing software testing efficiency through AI-guided test case prioritization: A systematic literature review. Journal of Advances in Computational Intelligence Theory, 5(3), 48-58. doi: 10.5281/ZENODO.8337098.
- Pyrih, Ya., Klymash, M., Pyrih, Yu., & Lavriv, O. (2023). Genetic algorithm as a tool for solving optimisation problems. Information and Communication Technologies and Electronic Engineering, 3(2), 95-107. doi: 10.23939/ictee2023.02.095.
- Sawant, P.D. (2024). Test case prioritization for regression testing using machine learning. In Proceedings of the international conference on artificial intelligence testing (pp. 152-153). Shanghai: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/AITest62860.2024.00027.
- Sharif, A., Marijan, D., & Liaaen, M. (2021). Deeporder: Deep learning for test case prioritization in continuous integration testing. In 2021 IEEE international conference on software maintenance and evolution (pp. 525-534). Luxembourg: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/ICSME52107.2021.00053.
- Shi, T., Xiao, L., & Wu, K. (2020). Reinforcement learning based test case prioritization for enhancing the security of software. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on data science and advanced analytics (pp. 663-672). Sydney: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/DSAA49011.2020.00076.
- Sugali, K. (2021). Software testing: Issues and challenges of artificial intelligence and machine learning. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 12(1), 101-112. doi: 10.5121/ijaia.2021.12107.
- Tahvili, S., & Hatvani, L. (2022). Artificial intelligence methods for optimization of the software testing process: With practical examples and exercises. London: Academic Press.
- Trifunova, A., Jakimovski, B., Chorbev, I., & Lameski, P. (2024). AI in software testing: Revolutionizing quality assurance. In Proceedings of the 32nd telecommunications forum (TELFOR) (pp. 1-4). Belgrade: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/TELFOR63250.2024.10819179.
- Vorochek, O., & Solovei, I. (2024). Research on artificial intelligence tools for automating the software testing process. Bulletin of National Technical University “KhPI”. Series: System Analysis, Control and Information Technologies, 1(11), 58-64. doi: 10.20998/2079-0023.2024.01.09.
- Weiss, M., & Tonella, P. (2022). Simple techniques work surprisingly well for neural network test prioritization and active learning (replicability study). In Proceedings of the 31st ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on software testing and analysis (pp. 139-150). New York: ACM. doi: 10.1145/3533767.3534375.
- Yaraghi, A.S., Bagherzadeh, M., Kahani, N., & Briand, L.C. (2022). Scalable and accurate test case prioritization in continuous integration contexts. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 49(4), 1615-1639. doi: 10.1109/TSE.2022.3184842.