Why Software Testing is Vital During an Economic Downturn
Stephen Davis
Helping test professionals get best-of-breed software testing tools that increase productivity, consistency & coverage
The team at Calleo love to share our decades of testing and IT experience and have been doing this for many years via our blog Software Testing Insights.
Each month, we share the latest insights, testing news, tool updates and guides.
In this edition:
- Winning in a Downturn with Software Testing
- What Does the OpenText Acquisition Mean for the Micro Focus Test Tools?
- Test Tool Checkpoint: Latest Software Versions
- In Next Month's Issue....
Winning in a Downturn with Software Testing
These days, most people understand that software testing is a critical aspect of software development.
But what about when times are tough, and businesses are squeezing budgets? Does testing warrant investment over other areas of the SDLC? In this article I’ll explain why it does, and why testing is key to winning in an economic downturn.
In fact, I’d argue that because testing helps control costs, it becomes even more important during a financial downturn. As W. E. Deming highlighted many years ago, high quality leads to lower costs and greater profitability.
When you invest in early and efficient testing, you identify defects while they’re still relatively cheap to fix. When you fix defects early, you reduce project overruns. When you minimise project overruns, you increase your release frequency. When you increase release frequency you drive change and business benefits… and on and on.
Testing also protects your brand by eliminating or at least reducing the chances of, issues in your live solutions.
Despite these cost benefits, there’s often a reluctance to make essential investments in testing.
Instead, many businesses expect testing to just ‘make do’ while they focus their budget on other areas of the SDLC that they believe will generate more immediate returns.
The winners of the current, and all future downturns, as with every downturn before, will be the ones who can invest in long-term success, reduce costs, and improve quality. To achieve this success in software development, you need efficient testing and cost-effective test tools.
The Deming Chain Reaction: Higher Quality = Lower Cost
As we discussed in the last edition of Testing Times, the Deming Chain Reaction is a great way to understand the relationship between quality, productivity, and reduced costs – Deming explains why testing is such an important aspect of software development.
In a nutshell, the Deming Chain Reaction shows why testing leads to increased productivity, lower costs, and higher profitability.
How Software Testing Helps To Control Costs
As explained above, effective software testing can yield substantial and lasting cost benefits.
- At a fundamental level, software testing helps you identify and fix defects early. Fixing defects early is crucial for minimising rework and project overruns and therefore, controlling budgets and time.
- Software testing also reduces the need for costly post-release fixes – and as we all know, live code is much more difficult and expensive to fix.
- Additionally, effective software testing reduces the risk of reputational damage. These days, a single software defect or security vulnerability can cause serious damage to a company's reputation. Anything that protects your reputation will help protect your bottom line.
Test Tools are Key to High Quality and Lower Spend
Clearly, you can’t just throw money at testing and expect to reduce your overall spend. You need to implement best practices to ensure your software testing is efficient and cost-effective.
Gone are the days when you just throw your code over to a bank of SMEs and get them to test their processes on excel spreadsheets.
Instead, you need to be smart with testing, and the smarter you are, the greater the long-term benefits and the Return on Investment (ROI).
To control costs, you need to take testing seriously. This means setting up rigorous processes, based on solid test tools. This will allow you to slash test times, eliminate effort, and remove the possibility of human error.
4 Ways Test Tools Are Key To Controlling Costs
- Automating repetitive tasks: The right test tools will increase your efficiency and reduce your need for manual testing. By selecting the right test tools, you will make significant operational cost savings. Automation can give you an ROI within 3-6 test cycles.
- Improving accuracy and consistency: Test tools reduce the potential for human error. Linking back to Deming, this will lead to fewer defects, and therefore fewer costs associated with fixing those defects.
- Reducing test management effort: This includes tracking test coverage, identifying areas where additional testing is needed, and monitoring and reporting on testing progress. Effective test management helps you optimise testing efforts and allows your business to make more informed decisions about where to allocate resources. Typically, this will save your test team 2-5 hours a week in test execution and reporting. Plus, it will save the test manager 1-2 days a week collating test results and reporting.
- Increasing test frequency: With the right tools, automated tests can be executed more often and in more environments. This helps you identify issues early in the development process and prevent them from becoming more expensive and time-consuming to fix later. Remember, a test pack can be executed in a fraction of the time it would take to do it manually. Done in hours when previously manual testing may have taken weeks.
Why You Need to Be Careful When Choosing Test Tools
As you can tell, I am a firm believer in tools, but they must be the right tools for the job.
I’ll use an example from my personal life...
You’ll not be surprised to learn that I use a washing machine to tackle the laundry. That’s right, I no longer take it down to the river and manually wash it by hand.
Unfortunately, a few years ago, my trusty washing machine broke down after a long and dignified period of service. I replaced it but decided to go for a cheaper option. After all, it’s just a washing machine, and they all do pretty much the same thing. That lower upfront cost was seductive.
Well, it turns out I was wrong, not all washing machines are created equally. That ‘cheap’ machine ended up costing me dearly in the long term. So much so that I had to replace it with a more expensive, but much more cost-effective machine within a few short years. The upfront cost is rarely indicative of the total cost of investment (TCO).
To bring it back to test tools...
Many businesses expect, or encourage, their testers to use cheap or free tools. While these tools do have the potential to improve your software quality, they require significant setup and maintenance effort.
Often, allegedly cheaper tools will end up costing more than tools with a higher ticket price. TCO has that habit of sneaking up on you and biting you on the bum.
To control test costs, and maintain quality, you need to make sure your test tools drive down effort and manual involvement.
When it comes to testing, as with all areas of software development, people are the real cost.
I‘m not here to tell you which tools to choose, after all each business will need something slightly different. However, if you focus on tools that increase simplicity, reduce effort and reliance on costly experts, and can grow with you, you’ll be on the right track.
If you do need a pointer in the right direction, of course, I am happy to help.
Summary: Winning in a Downturn with Software Testing
Let’s quickly recap everything I’ve covered:
- Many years ago, W. E. Deming established the link between high quality, low costs, and increased profits.
- Software testing is the best way to increase quality and therefore control costs.
- To test efficiently, you need to invest in the right tools
- Cost-effective test tools will automate repetitive tasks, increase efficiency, and help you manage testing efforts
- This, in turn, leads to increased user satisfaction, lower costs to fix defects, faster change, more sales and, ultimately, increased financial returns.
As I mentioned earlier, the winners of this downturn will be those who invest in long-term success, reduce costs, and improve quality. Within software development projects, testing is the most effective way to achieve these goals.
What Does the OpenText Acquisition Mean for the Micro Focus Test Tools?
OpenText, a leading provider of enterprise information management solutions recently acquired Micro Focus.
The erstwhile Micro Focus test tools have had many homes over the years, including Mercury, HP, HPE and now OpenText. But who is OpenText, and how do they handle acquisitions? We look at this and more.
Find out what the OpenText Acquisition could mean for the Micro Focus Test Tools
Test Tool Checkpoint: Latest Software Versions
It can be hard to keep track of software updates and current versions.
Below we’ve listed the current releases of the industry leading Micro Focus test tools suite:
The perfect test management tool for traditional (e.g. waterfall) development methods.
Your ideal agile first test management.
Rapid and efficient cloud based performance testing.
Free IDE based performance testing.
On premises performance testing with huge support.
Global performance powerhouse for large companies.
Automation tool supporting the widest range of applications.
Your mobile testing toolkit including access to labs and virtual devices.
IDE based test automation.
In our next issue....
Should You Adopt AI and ML in Software Testing?
What are their benefits and drawbacks in software test automation?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have been gaining significant traction in recent years, and the field of software testing is no exception. If you aren’t feeling the impact yet, you soon will be.
We’ll have a look at the benefits and drawbacks of using AI and ML in software test automation, and whether they are something you should adopt today.
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