Software development, like any other activity that is done for money, has to be focused on three things: high-quality product or service, clients satisfaction, and cost reduction. While the first two things’ importance is obvious for the stable and growing revenue, the third one may seem not so crucial in case the income is high.
But this is a wrong approach. The more significant cost reduction you achieve within the development process, the bigger profit you get in the end. This doesn’t mean you have to save on developer’s salaries, hardware they work on, or professionals tools. The biggest price you pay in the course of work and after its completion is that of your mistakes.
The cost of software failure.
Never underestimate the cost of a bug. It may seem a thing of little significance when it appears unnoticed, but it can cause serious problems afterward, actually destroying the whole work, affecting the quality of your product and as a result, your customers’ satisfaction. This is the shortest way for you to lose your money. Sometimes it’s smarter to invest more in overall testing at the development stage, then try covering reputational costs and financial loss. So test. Test until you’re sure there’s nothing left that could cause major issues and disappoint the end user.
According to the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, the US economy loses around $60B every year due to software bugs. A single bug, detected in the phase of gathering requirements, may cost you $100. Not that much, compared to the product’s final price. However, as it lasts through all the development stages until the production, the price you may pay for it grows dramatically and can easily reach $10,000. We’re still talking about a single bug, remember? Just one. Imagine now, how much would you lose because of several bugs at the final stage of the product delivery process.
The earlier a bug is detected, the less time and resources will be needed to eliminate it and the smaller the consequences will be. Software testing and early bug fixes turn out to be much cheaper than those that popped up on the release stage. Prevention is better than a cure.
Benefits of software testing and quality assurance.
As the two critical components of excellent software creation, testing and QA can do a lot for you to successfully create the best product and sell it for a fair price. Let’s find out, what benefits of this unbeatable combination your business can get.
1. Save your money
As we already know, a bug in the production stage can be very expensive, and more of them can cause enormous financial and reputational loss. It’s much cheaper to detect it in the early stages, using QA testing.
2. Prevent corporate catastrophes
Bugs in corporate software are even more dangerous as they can provoke costly consequences like missing data, system blackouts, or communication collapses.
3. Get customer’s trust
Ensuring your clients that the software quality is your priority, and delivering them a perfect product you build a long-term relationship. Its fruits are precious and include your reputation and prosperity.
4. Provide a wonderful user experience
A customer who gets a qualitative product that doesn’t need additional adjustments after launch can be called a happy one. This can only be achieved by thorough bug prevention and elimination. It looks wise to invest in testing at the development stage instead of losing disproportionally more time and money on post-production bugs removal.
When a customer is satisfied, he is likely to share his feelings with others, thus bringing you more clients. The experience, communicated personally, works much better than any reviews, ads, and blog articles.
5. Get more profit
The high-quality product can be sold at a price big enough to cover all the expenses and investments and result in a decent income for the participants. At the same time, a customer, angry with the multiple software failures, is more likely to require a refund.
6. Reach the high productivity and efficiency level
The QA testing means order, speed, and smoothness of the development process, as well as the final product quality result.
Combining QA and testing is a win-win strategy for you, your customers, and their users. You spend less time and financial resources for development, your client gets a correctly working product, and the end-users are satisfied with their experience.
Automated testing. Why implement.
One of the most important factors ensuring testers’ productivity is reducing the testing time, which can be achieved by automatization. Of course, automated testing can’t be applied for all the operations and testing stages, but can save enormous amounts of time on some of them:
-the repetition of the same test case
-tiresome and monotonous test cases
-multiple running of the cases with different conditions
-need to save time for the higher priority tasks
-many browsers and environments required for test cases execution
Conclusion
Any business, aiming to profits, should make its best to minimize the cost of the production process without losing the final product’s quality. Surely, this must also be true when we talk about development. The best cost-cutting measures a software development company can undertake are quality assurance and testing, which more than cover all the investments. The debugged code results in a high-quality product, benefitting the developer, his client, and the end-users, that is fully satisfied with the product he uses. “Clean code – big income” – this should be the motto of those who want to make money with development.
About the Author: Ekaterina Cheban
