Counting The Cost of Software Bugs

How much would you pay for a bug? The logical answer to this question is nothing. No one wants a bug in their software or website. Therefore, it is imperative to have countermeasures in place to prevent such issues from reaching production environments and wreaking havoc with users.

Some countermeasures include having a QA team in place. Still, many companies can go further by implementing additional tools such as automated testing, security testing, and an overall better process.

But what happens when there are no countermeasures in place? What is the financial impact behind having such issues make their way to production environments and affect consumers?

1.7 Trillion Dollars

According to a study from 2016, software failures cost the worldwide economy $1.7 trillion! Six years later, that amount has most likely increased due to inflation and other factors, including the increase in overall technology and Internet users.

Aside from the cost, the number of users affected can also have a large impact on the user experience. Over 3 billion people have been affected by random software bugs and unexpected glitches resulting in poor user experience. Many industries are constantly at risk for issues, including financial companies, public services, and transportation industries.

The culprit is bad software quality due to companies reluctant to adopt testing strategies or even a dedicated testing team. Quality assurance is still a department that many companies are hesitant to invest in. With the industry growing more dependent on technology, having a QA team is more important now than it was over ten years ago.

More Than Just Money

Aside from the monetary impact, bugs can also cause further damage to people, including personal injury and even loss of life! This will result in a loss of interest in both the product and the website.

One example of this happened to Fiat Chrysler when errors were discovered in the code that resulted in temporarily disabling airbags and seat belt functionality during a rollover. Unfortunately, there were two crashes, one fatal, that resulted uncovered this error. The end result was a recall of over one million trucks in order to resolve the issue.

Every day there is a new data breach that occurs with large and small companies. Its impact can destroy people’s lives, such as in the Equifax 2017 data breach. Hackers managed to steal personal data, including social security numbers and credit card information from 145 million users. People were outraged further after finding out the company did not reveal that over 50% of Americans were at risk of identity theft.

How to Prevent Such Issues

With the risk of bugs and glitches, this only enforces the need for having a QA team in place to prevent such financial impacts. With a dedicated QA team in place, the risk of having bugs and other issues find their way into the production environment and affecting consumers is reduced rapidly.

In addition to having a dedicated team, it is also important to have a strong testing strategy in place. This will help the team define and target the critical features and functionality for testing. The testing plan will give more visibility and ensure everyone is aligned with both the project and testing efforts.

One final piece to the testing arsenal is automation. Having an automated testing tool in place will further reinforce the team’s ability to catch issues throughout the various stages of the development lifecycle process. There are many different tools to choose from and it all depends on the overall team size, structure, and budget plan.

I highly recommend using a low-code-based tool that is simple to use and fast to set up, such as UIlicious. With UIlicious, the team can create automated test cases without having to learn and know complex code languages. Plus, the test scripts can be scheduled to run at different times throughout the day and week. This further makes the testing process and efforts stronger. For more information, check out UIlicious today and receive 10% off!

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