The importance of Software Testing
Software testing is one of the most useful tools for building functional, scalable, and maintainable software.
Even though it’s highly regarded as a best practice in software development, many organizations don’t test their software products before releasing them to the market, which drives them to a lot of rework and wasted time and resources.
In this article, we’re going to explain why testing is so important to the success of your software project.
Imagine that you’re at the mall. You are staring at the front window of a shoe store, and you spot some shoes that you like. So you go in, ask for a pair of your size, and purchase them.
When you arrive home, you try them on. They look so lovely on you. They feel a bit tight, but you decide to use them anyway.
After a few hours, you start to experience some discomfort. You take the shoes off and realize they are causing you inexplicable injuries.
You say to yourself that you won’t buy a pair of shoes again without trying them first. Seems logical, right?
Now imagine that you and your team have recently developed an awesome app.
Everyone in the company is happy with the result, and you’re ready to release it to the market. The product wasn’t tested because you needed to monetize it urgently and wouldn’t want to waste any more time. So, it seemed perfectly reasonable to launch the app to the market as soon as possible.
This is one of the most common mistakes companies make when working on a digital product. Let’s see why.
Why is software testing so important?
According to a 2020 report by CISQ, the cost of poor quality software in the United States is about $2.08 trillion collectively. This includes the costs from software failures, unsuccessful development projects, legacy system problems, technical debt, and security vulnerabilities.
As humans, we make mistakes all the time. In a software development project, some of these mistakes are unimportant, but others can be expensive and critical to the product and business’ success.
Nowadays, software applications are increasingly complex. Most of the time, startups have to develop their digital products in record time and meet high-quality standards.
Errors in software development can come from bad decisions, poor execution, or inefficient processes.
There’s an objective truth that can’t be ignored here. Developers that build a software product shouldn’t be responsible for conducting quality tests.
Software testing needs to be considered an investment in product success and a necessary step in meeting the quality standards that today’s users demand.
On top of that, developers may don’t even notice the flaws they make. That’s why having a dedicated person in charge of conducting QA tests is the best practice.
Software Testing is a comprehensive method that helps achieve high-quality product development. Through software testing, the QA team can evaluate not only the product itself but also the development and test cycles, including techniques, tools, and processes.
Besides detecting failures before the product goes into production, the QA testers put themselves in the user’s shoes, looking for the best experience and making sure that all limitations are eliminated.
Benefits of software testing
Testing your software product can bring significant advantages to your project and your business. Here are some of the main benefits of testing:
Saves Time and Money
Bugs are expensive, and production bugs are even more costly to resolve. According to the IBM System Sciences Institute, fixing a bug after launch costs 100x more than fixing it at early stages.
Performing QA tests before deploying to production can help significantly minimize the number of software issues and their inherent costs. As a result, the errors that do surface are relatively minor and can be fixed more quickly and easily.
Maintains Product Quality
QA processes are designed to achieve high software stability and reliability. For this purpose, Quality Control tests evaluate functionality, performance, security, usability, and more.
Furthermore, some tests also consider the possibility that the user might not use the product as intended. Part of this testing is to make sure improper use doesn’t cause failure. As a result, the final product has minimal defects and is highly expected to work as intended.
Makes it easier to add new features
Code gets naturally harder to change as a product scales and gets more interconnected. Conducting regular software tests helps avoid calcification and allows developers to add new features more confidently, as they can corroborate that changes in the software aren’t causing significant issues.
Increase Security
While a software program might perform all functions as intended, it may not necessarily be completely secure.
If there are any vulnerabilities in the product, users’ data and privacy could be compromised. QA helps ensure that your product is built with security in mind.
Protects Reputation
The quality of your software can reflect on your company and brand. By releasing a high-quality product that offers excellent features with comprehensive security, you can build a positive reputation for your business.
In this sense, Software Testing helps your product serve as a fitting brand ambassador for your business.
Improves Customer Satisfaction
QA Testing allows you to make sure that your product gives your customers exactly what they expect.
Conducting software tests helps teams check if the software works smoothly and without any problems. As a result, customers get a quality product that they are happy to use.
How do we test software at Bixlabs?
Software testing allows us to deeply evaluate the projects we work on. It’s a process that helps us achieve a high level of confidence in our work and set indicators to measure the severity and quantity of bugs based on particular test coverage.
During our QA tests, we make sure to complete each of these steps:
- Understand the expected behavior for the product we are going to test.
- Think test cases intelligently, choosing the inputs, analyzing the conditions, and the expected results
- Run the test cases to validate our assumptions
- Compare the results obtained with those we expected
To obtain valuable results in our tests, we carefully select and design each one to find the highest possible number of critical bugs within the available resources and deadlines.
Working on challenging projects over the years helped us develop a testing process that allows us to:
- Thoroughly evaluate product quality
- Detect design and development flaws, and also opportunities for improvement
- Help the Development and Product teams make better decisions
- Verify interoperability and compliance with industry standards
- Reduce risk to zero
Tests allow us to build up trust in our software products. How? Let’s see a quick example:
Imagine that we run a set of tests on a software product and we detect a critical error: the app loses the connection with the database under particular circumstances, and all the latest data entered is lost.
In this case, conducting tests enables us to immediately decide that the product does not meet the quality standards and shouldn’t be deployed to production.
On the contrary, if the tests allowed us to detect cosmetic errors like images, fonts, alignments, or colors. We can decide to deploy to production anyway and commit to correct these issues within a certain period, given that those errors don’t affect the end-users operations.
In both scenarios conducting tests becomes a valuable tool to make an informed decision regarding the product, ultimately saving time, resources and protecting the project’s integrity.
Conclusion
Testing software products is necessary because we are human, after all. Software development is a collaborative process where various actors constantly work, make decisions, and negotiate expectations. In this context, mistakes can and will occur.
In this sense, software testing and Quality Assurance help gain more control of the development process, increase confidence, and reduce costs.
At Bixlabs, we help top-tier startups to build robust, user-centered digital products. We have a multidisciplinary team of software engineers, designers, and QA testers trained in the latest technologies and eager to work on innovative projects.
We strive to build lasting relationships where we can work hand-in-hand with our clients to create high-quality, successful products.
If you’re looking for an experienced team that helps you build or improve your digital product, give us a call!