Banks and financial services firms are increasingly investing in the size and quality of their QA teams as comprehensive software testing is steadily rising on the priority ladder.
But how does an organisation even know it’s doing this right? “Releasing software is never going to be a “set it and forget it” process,” according to Rob Mason, the CTO of Boston-based Applause.
“Testing, revision, quality assurance (QA), repeat—this all needs to be seamless. But what quality metrics should you be tracking? Are there best practices?” Mason wondered.
“And more importantly, given how continued economic and political uncertainty worldwide affect budgets, how can businesses demonstrate testing’s value to stakeholders in an environment where there is pressure to consistently do more with less?”
Mason wrote in a recent Forbes blog that the problem with doing something well behind the scenes is that it’s very hard to quantify.
“It’s very easy to explain the value of paying for car or health insurance when you have a car accident or get sick,” he stated. “It’s harder if you’re a consistently safe driver and are always healthy.”
Mason stressed that “testing is a bit like insurance for digital quality. Doing it ‘right’ means that your users might not notice you did anything at all. You identified and resolved issues before software hit the market, and the product does what it’s supposed to do.
However, “do it ‘wrong,’ and there are bugs, delays, angry boards, executives and customers, as well as a brand reputation for crappy quality,” he wrote.
Digital quality
Mason went on to write that quality is the foundation of an organization’s brand, and many invest a lot of time and money into making sure that bugs and defects don’t make their way into production.
That said, digital quality needs to be an intersectional discipline with the customer experience front and centre. “It is not just an exercise in bug hunting,” he said.
QA teams may look to test things like functionality, localisation and user experience (UX), while product and engineering teams want to release software faster, but all of these connect, Mason argued.
“The companies doing it ‘right’ look at digital quality holistically and use testing to provide product, engineering and QA teams with a connected and cohesive picture of how customers are using the product or application.”
While each group may define quality differently, according to Mason there are a number of common metrics that leading organizations track, such as defect metrics, user experience and satisfaction metrics as well as user behaviour and coverage metrics.
“They look at the overall quantity of testing performed including percentage of code coverage, devices and integration and can help organisations identify where they can incorporate more testing into their overall software development process,” he explained.
Mason stressed this should include unit tests and test case count by the area or features most important to the business.
Admittedly, there are always going to be “escapes,” or bugs that made it through both the development and QA process into the field.
“These are some of the biggest measures of quality,” thinks Mason. “How many issues come back from users? How many are detected in production, and are you tracking those trends over time? When this new customer and stakeholder feedback is input, the depth and quality of the software application can only get better.”
Return on investment
If an organisation tracks all of these metrics and invests in testing digital quality, is there ROI?
“There is evidence that testing can influence other ‘business value’ metrics like revenue, customer retention rates and time to market,” Mason said.
According to analyst firm IDC, organizations using testing solutions can realize benefits worth an annual average of $3.8 million per organization, or $54,900 per application release, and save 681 hours of staff time per application release.
“Defects have a real cost,” Mason said. “And the cost of doing nothing is not insignificant!”
In fact, organisations like The Consortium for Information & Software Quality estimated that the cost of poor software quality in the United States alone has grown to at least $2.41 trillion.
Therefore, the pressure to deliver quality software products faster than competitors, while increasing market share and optimizing resources, is “non-stop for today’s organisations, Mason said.
“Testing is a critical way to do this and key to digital quality success. It should be viewed as a worthwhile investment for organizations looking to ensure their brands’ reputations,” he concluded.
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