There is no doubt about it. The digital infrastructure of many banks, insurance companies and other financial services firms is getting increasingly complex.
More sophisticated software, a growing number of apps and larger volumes of data put enormous pressure on QA teams in most financial institutions.
In addition, an increasing wave of threats and cyber attacks prompt many boards to put more pressure on their staff to thoroughly test and scrutinise software systems before they are live, including any update or amendment.
A particular problem arises when the people responsible for pushing to production must also oversee that product’s quality.
Sometimes, they must choose between two competing needs: do I meet the production quota or deadline? Or do I meet the production quality requirements?
The result is either delays or bad performance, the latter of which can quickly escalate to bigger problems, according to Jason Baum, the senior director of developer relations & community at Sauce Labs, an American cloud-hosted, web and mobile application automated testing platform company.
Based in San Francisco, California, Baum said that “missing alerts can also inevitably lead to outages on an epic and global scale, causing significant downtime at a major cost.”
“The lack of testing risks software quality, user experience, and system stability.”
– Jason Baum
The July Crowdstrike saga is a good example of that, when millions of computers went down and the digital infrastructure of hundreds of companies was impacted, including various banks and other finance firms, mostly in North America.
“Before “shift left” became the norm, developers would write code that quality assurance testing teams would then comb through and identify the initial bugs in the product,” Baum explained in a recent analysis on The News Stack.
“Developers were then only tasked with reviewing the proofed end product to ensure it functioned as they initially envisioned,” he said.
“But now, the testing and quality control onus has been put on developers earlier and earlier. An outcome of this dynamic is that developers are becoming increasingly numb to the high volume of bugs they are coming across in the process, and as a result, they are pushing bad code to production.”
After all, if developers are critiquing their work, can they claim to be the most objective critics, Baum wondered.
When developers are overtaxed, they get lost in the big picture and start pushing to code rather than ensuring each element works properly, he added, singling out a recent survey of developers which revealed that 67% have pushed to prod without testing, with 28% admitting they regularly do so, and 61% have used untested code generated by ChatGPT.
Alert fatigue
Baum said that, across the industry, quality control can take many forms, but quality and production are often competing goals.
“When the same teams are responsible for both, problems such as ‘alert fatigue’ arise,” he noted, adding that “this condition emerges when developers, overwhelmed by constant urgent notifications, ignore critical alerts.”
Baum argued that, “without vital testing phases, error rates are high, and finance organisations expose themselves to security vulnerabilities that erode consumer trust and company reputation.”
In fact, he pointed out that the customer experience quality has hit an all-time low, with an unprecedented 39% of brands significantly declining in CX scores in 2024.
“While users are unfortunately all too used to disappointing software, there are severe ramifications in a world run by digital experiences,” Baum wrote.
He claimed that more than half of consumers would consider switching to a competitor after just three or four negative interactions with a company’s website, software, or mobile app, and 70% of people say poor digital experiences have a moderate, severe, or extreme impact on their purchasing decisions.
“Organisations must ensure that vital testing phases are robust and well-defined to mitigate these adverse outcomes,” Baum stressed.
According to the industry insider, these phases should include comprehensive automated testing, continuous integration practices, and rigorous manual testing by dedicated QA teams.
“Developers should focus on unit and integration tests, while QA teams handle system, regression acceptance, and exploratory testing,” he continued.
“This division of labour enables developers to concentrate on writing and refining code while QA specialists ensure the software meets the highest quality standards before production,” Baum said.
He stated that any bank or firm should foster a collaborative environment where developers and QA teams work closely, organizations can enhance software quality, user experience, and system stability.
“Implementing regular cross-functional meetings and integrated workflows helps teams stay aligned on goals and processes.”
– Jason Baum
Embedding these practices into the company culture and investing in the right tools will protect against high error rates and security vulnerabilities, Baum said, “thereby maintaining consumer trust and safeguarding the company’s reputation.”
Finally, he was keen to stress that “developers do not neglect critical issues out of laziness, they are working with limited bandwidth and trying to prioritize the bugs they think matter the most.”
However, no system is in place to truly capture what is most crucial when developers are trying to take care of everything, Baum pointed out.
“Organisations cannot continue dismantling QA teams and shifting the testing and quality burden onto developers,” he continued.
“The developer experience must be reprioritized, with companies investing in comprehensive tools and processes that facilitate continuous quality.”
This means providing “robust automated testing frameworks, real-time monitoring systems, and dedicated support teams to assist developers,” Baum summarised.
Rather than focusing on individual behaviour, he concluded that it is crucial to reexamine and restructure existing workflows to integrate quality at every stage.
“By cultivating a culture of quality throughout the organization and ensuring that teams have the resources they need to uphold it, the “red alert” problems will not be lost in a sea of chaos but instead addressed proactively and efficiently,” Baum concluded.
UPCOMING QA FINANCIAL EVENT
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Test automation, data and software risk management in the era of AI
The QA Financial Forum launches in Singapore on November 6th, 2024, at the Tanglin club.
An invited audience of DevOps, testing and quality engineering leaders from financial firms will hear presentations from expert speakers.
Delegate places are free for employees of banks, insurance companies, capital market firms and trading venues.
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