Some business owners think of testing as of an unnecessary addition to software development. They ask development teams to cut down the testing in pursuit of money savings (which they consider big, especially when it comes to automated testing). Rushing to deploy software to production ASAP is another incentive that makes them want to skip the quality assurance part. However, this approach has a clear reverse effect. We are ready to prove right that software testing is a sure way towards savings and is beneficial for business — first, in this article, and then by our assurance testing services.
Software testing: a quick intro
Software testing, aka quality assurance, is much more than the art of finding big and small bugs. Its mission is to check whether the software meets all the project requirements, is reliable, durable, working smoothly, usable, and ready for production.
To embrace all aspects of the software impeccability, there are different types of software testing — like security testing, usability testing, functional testing, performance testing, and many more. Manual and automation testing represent both human watchfulness and incredible machine efficiency. QA teams use optimal combinations of these testing types according to your business needs.
The business gains of software testing
So let’s get down to business and see the evident pros of software testing through the business owner’s perspective.
Save on early bug fixes during development
In web design, there is one universal truth — small bugs are cheap to fix, so it’s better to discover them early. When they grow big and fat from chewing on your software, the costs to fix them grow exponentially.
These bugs become much more cumbersome to get rid of. If undiscovered, they often affect other functionality and hide other bugs. They also tend to multiply — just like your bug fixing expenses in such cases.
In this case, developers have to spend much more time to find the reason for the bug, track the chain of its influence, make changes to the codebase, and so on. Time is money in web development, and this could have easily been avoided.
Agile-based development with its iterative approach perfectly fits the famous QA principle “test early and often test.” Indeed, each meaningful piece of software development should end with testing. This is very helpful in catching the bugs as early as possible and receiving the customer’s feedback.
Avoid money losses caused by bugs in production
What can be more costly than fixing bugs discovered late in the development? Bugs discovered in production! The bugs that have slipped to live websites are usually noticed by customers. Some bugs are especially pleasing to hackers. And all of them will please your competitors.
According to the Software Fail Watch, analysis of software failures by Tricentis, businesses lost $1.7 trillion in assets due to software failures in 2017.
Usability, performance, or functionality issues may lead you to losing potential clients. They will be either reluctant or simply unable to proceed with your website or app to make a conversion. Opportunities and money are leaking away.
Some bugs bite especially hard because they block the critical functionality — for example, the e-commerce checkout process. This is the reality of a great number of e-commerce stores that look like they have never seen a QA engineer.
Security holes are worth a separate topic because they may lead to you directly losing your or your customer’s money if your website or application deals with payments. And what about lawsuits due to sensitive information disclosure? Lost databases? This list of horrors could go on!
Preserve your business reputation
Software bugs can also be eating up your business reputation, which is easy to lose and hard to earn. Dissatisfied customers tell each other about your software issues and post this information online.
Moreover, announcements about software failures also immediately drop the company’s shareholder value.
To sum up
We don’t want this post to look like a horror story, because we believe that every story can have a good ending! And especially so with our website development company. Consider the business gains of software testing and contact our strong QA team. Stay protected against losses, and let your business flourish!