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Cutting QA short comes with a cost


By Vu Lam


 Vu Lam
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April 12, 2012 —  (Page 1 of 2)
The reason your software works the way it was designed to is because of a group of downtrodden, undervalued and unsung heroes.

They are often dismissively described as testers, but these champions of exactitude and precision can be more accurately termed “Quality Assurance.” They set the bar high and work hard to ensure that the software you buy is easy to use and efficient. Without their expertise, you would encounter a lot of inaccessible, bug-ridden releases.

QA is frequently undervalued by software developers. It is often seen as an unnecessary expense, a drain on time and resources. The truth is that finding and fixing bugs is an unrewarding task that demands a great deal of effort for very little palpable return. It is tough to calculate the cost of bugs in your finished product, and even tougher to take your eye off spiraling costs and a slipping deadline.

It’s been 10 years since the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology released an RTI study that estimated software bugs were costing the U.S. economy US$59.5 billion a year. Much has changed in the last decade. Automated testing is more common, new development methodologies encourage a different approach, and tools for recording bugs have improved dramatically. Despite all that, the cost of software bugs remains high.

Don’t cut corners
It is understandable, especially in the current economic climate, that companies are increasingly outsourcing QA and even cutting corners in order to rush their software out the door to consumers. After all, we can always let the consumer do the testing and then patch after release, right? Wrong!

The cost of fixing bugs increases dramatically after release, and the damage you can do to your brand by releasing unpolished software is frightening. Rushing to market is a false economy, and expecting consumers to be happy about serving as unpaid beta testers is an overused ploy that can easily backfire.

According to an IBM and Rockwell Automation study, the cost of fixing a bug post-release can be 100x higher than if you discover it early. Many developers are seduced by the ease with which software can be patched nowadays. The growth of the cloud, improvements in application deployment and the always-connected nature of the average user combine to give the false impression that bug fixes and improvements can be delayed until after release.

While the ideal might be to frontload your schedule and spend enough time on design to avoid creating any bugs in the first place, that’s an ambitious aim. QA represents a more realistic middle ground between excessive planning at the start and burying your head in the sand until the negative feedback starts to pour in.


Related Search Term(s): QA

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