Launching your app/product without testing is Heinous!

What according to you is one of the most important things any software or application should pay heed to? It is to function properly! Oftentimes there are issues that are highly frustrating than a sudden crash of an app or say losing all the saved data. In software enterprises a bug-plagued program or app can prove very heinous to both developer and the client.

According to a 2002 report by the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), software is particularly prone to errors because of its mind-boggling complexity. Software products are routinely measured in millions of lines of code, and software developers spend up to eighty percent of development costs on identifying and correcting defects. According to the study, factors contributing to quality problems include limited liability by software vendors, marketing strategies, and decreasing returns on testing and debugging.

Software Testing measures the quality of a software/application under test by finding bugs in it and is a very critical part of the development process. It educates stakeholders, developers and users with information about the functionality of the product or service under test. Depending on the testing technique employed, software testing can be executed at any time in the software development process. Most commonly, testing often occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed, while in the Agile approach the testing effort is ongoing.

The 2002 NIST study reported that software bugs are so ubiquitous and so destructive that they cost the US economy an estimated $59.5 billion annually. At the national level, over half of the costs are borne by software users and the remainder by software developers/vendors. The report states that more than a third of these costs, or an estimated $22.2 billion, could be eliminated by an improved testing infrastructure that enables early and more effective identification and removal of software defects. Currently, the scenario is that more than half of the defects are not detected until late in the development process or even after the launch of the product/app.

The calamitous blow of some failures is well known. In 2013, there was a massive software failure that could have been avoided by rigorous testing before release. The rollout of Healthcare.gov, the healthcare exchange website operated by the United States federal government in support of the Affordable Care Act, was pronounced by all observers regardless of political affiliation to be a disaster. Analysis by the Reuters news agency in mid-October stated that the total contract-based cost of building Healthcare.gov swelled by a full three times from its initial estimate of $93.7 million to about $292 million. It’s getting sorted, but at a high-rise price.

The ever changing and chaotic needs in a software enterprise are not a big deal as it’s a common thing. Techniques such as agile software development have been developed to cope with them. It will be beneficial to create more transparency, code reviews, repetitive ‘unit tests’ to automatically find defect, and the constant release of new iterations into the real world, where it’s used by customers. Unfortunately, regulations pertaining to large government contracts in many countries, including the United States, choke effective agile software development.

Agile Testing

Agile as the name refers implies something to do very quickly. Agile testing empowers all members of a cross-functional agile team to ensure delivering the product value expected by the customer at frequent iterations. In general agile methods attempt to minimize risk and maximize productivity by developing software in short iterations and de-emphasizing work on interim work artifacts and it is people oriented. Agile methodologies have gained immense popularity throughout the past decade. Agile development recognizes that testing is not a separate phase, but an integral part of software development, along with coding. However, when it comes to testing in Agile environments, you are all essentially required to carefully consider your decision and decide what, how, and when to automate in order to gear up your overall efficiency and test coverage.