AndersenSoft
01-09-09, 02:17 AM
Every year in a software development branch of IT business, significant amount of money is spent on quality. Why is quality so expensive? Is quality so important? Why do companies spend money on Quality Assurance and Software Testing Departments maintenance?
When I think of it I come to conclusion that software quality verification sometimes is even more expensive than software development itself.
Sometimes the quality of software means everything. There are a lot of examples of such systems: the software for railway and air transportation, banking and financial software, healthcare. If something is done wrong in this kind of systems, and if it is not found and corrected on time, it may lead to serious problems in healthcare, or even result in numerous casualties. Often a number of testers taking part in project implementation is more than a number of developers. But every found bug will eventually save money or a company’s reputation.
I took part in this kind of projects. The team had been working on software for medicine distribution for 2 years. There were 9 people who tested the project and only 4 programmers. The price of drugs was rather high, thus a testing team spent much time carrying out their tests with precise care in order to find all the defects that could affect the system. The main requirement for such systems is high accuracy of calculations. And testing engineers repeat the same actions again and again to make sure that everything is correctly calculated. If system had a bug, patient would have received an overdose and possibly died.
That’s why system and corporations use every possibility to make their products of high quality and spend money on keeping software testing engineers’ army. And it’s only one example of healthcare software importance. So, the quality costs much money, and it’s reasonable to pay for it.
On the other hand, we should remember that there are no products without bugs; sometimes it is impossible to find all of them. Taking this fact in consideration, there are Customers, who do order software development in our company but… refuse software testing services. They think that they can save money this way. But I would like to say “A Miser Pays Twice” and the best way is to verify software carefully even if it requires additional efforts.
The full article is available there Why does quality cost so much? (http://www.andersensoft.com/en/article_quality.php).
Other articles are available there: Andersen blog. Software development company blog. (http://www.andersensoft.com/en/blog.php)
When I think of it I come to conclusion that software quality verification sometimes is even more expensive than software development itself.
Sometimes the quality of software means everything. There are a lot of examples of such systems: the software for railway and air transportation, banking and financial software, healthcare. If something is done wrong in this kind of systems, and if it is not found and corrected on time, it may lead to serious problems in healthcare, or even result in numerous casualties. Often a number of testers taking part in project implementation is more than a number of developers. But every found bug will eventually save money or a company’s reputation.
I took part in this kind of projects. The team had been working on software for medicine distribution for 2 years. There were 9 people who tested the project and only 4 programmers. The price of drugs was rather high, thus a testing team spent much time carrying out their tests with precise care in order to find all the defects that could affect the system. The main requirement for such systems is high accuracy of calculations. And testing engineers repeat the same actions again and again to make sure that everything is correctly calculated. If system had a bug, patient would have received an overdose and possibly died.
That’s why system and corporations use every possibility to make their products of high quality and spend money on keeping software testing engineers’ army. And it’s only one example of healthcare software importance. So, the quality costs much money, and it’s reasonable to pay for it.
On the other hand, we should remember that there are no products without bugs; sometimes it is impossible to find all of them. Taking this fact in consideration, there are Customers, who do order software development in our company but… refuse software testing services. They think that they can save money this way. But I would like to say “A Miser Pays Twice” and the best way is to verify software carefully even if it requires additional efforts.
The full article is available there Why does quality cost so much? (http://www.andersensoft.com/en/article_quality.php).
Other articles are available there: Andersen blog. Software development company blog. (http://www.andersensoft.com/en/blog.php)