4 Reasons Why Software Testing is Important

The importance of software testing is imperative. A lot of times this process is skipped, therefore, the product and business might suffer. To understand the importance of testing, here are some key points that explain why your product should undergo it.

1. Software Testing Saves Money

Testing has many benefits and one of the most important ones is cost-effectiveness. Having testing in your project can save money in the long run. Software development consists of many stages and if bugs are caught in the earlier stages it costs much less to fix them. That is why it’s important to get testing done as soon as possible. Getting testers or QA’s who are technically educated and experienced for a software project is just like an investment and your project will benefit budget-wise.

Why you may ask? Imagine you just downloaded a banking app and it has one of the smallest commissions around the market for sending money fast. You tried to “Sign Up” and an “Error” message  showed up. Now due to that problem, not only you, but many other users can’t “Sign Up” and use that product. So their business has already lost money because transactions are not made and unresolved the issue in the very start. Thus, users will go and find another similar app that works and probably will never return to that one because of the bad experience they had. Testing essentially helps you save time and money in the long run because issues are resolved before bigger problems occur. The maintenance costs are also lower and in the end if product works 100% as it should, no exponential damage is done to your business cost-wise.

• In May of 1996, a software bug caused the bank accounts of 823 customers of a major U.S. bank to be credited with 920 million US dollars.
• Suncorp Bank – In February last year, a malfunction during a routine upgrade caused the disappearance of money from customers’ bank accounts. Additional customer complaints included overdrawn and locked out accounts.

2. Security

Another important point to add is security. This is probably the most sensitive and yet most vulnerable part.

There have been many situations where user information has been stolen or hackers have gotten to it and used it for their benefit. That is the reason people are looking for trusted products that they can rely on. As a user of many products and apps, I am always looking for products that I would give my information to with confidence and know that it will be safe; perhaps so do you. Our personal information and what we do with it should stay as private as possible, especially using services where it is a vulnerability to us, for example, banking information, security details etc.

How testing can help your product security:

• The user gets a trustworthy product;
• Keeps user’s personal information and data safe;
• Vulnerability free products;
• Problems and risks are eliminated beforehand;
• Saves a lot of troubles later on;

Sometimes even the smallest security issues have brought huge problems to businesses around the world, so it should always be important to assure top-notch quality products to customers.

As of this year European Union has new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and it mandates companies to be more careful with their users’ personal data. Fines for missteps are huge and companies must comply with the new regulation.

• Cairns Hospital – A catastrophic glitch affecting five Australian hospitals was introduced during the application of security patches designed to counter potential future cyber-attacks. It required more than two weeks for the hospitals to recover their electronic medical record systems.
• China Airlines Airbus A300 crashed due to a software bug on April 26, 1994, killing 264 innocent lives.

3. Product Quality

In order to make your product vision come to life, it has to work as planned. Following product requirements is imperative, to an extent, because it helps you get the wanted end results.

Products always serve users in some ways, so it’s very important that it brings the value it promises, hence it should work properly to ensure great customer experience. Development of an app, for example, has many processes included and testing gets a glimpse of every bit – it checks if the apps graphics are aligned properly, tests the main functionality, checks if menus are intuitive, etc. After developers fix issues, sometimes another issue may appear unexpectedly somewhere else, that’s just how testing goes sometimes, so it’s great to find those issues to be resolved and be a part of quality product being delivered to marketplace.

Device compatibility is also checked for the product, for example, an app’s compatibility on many devices and operating systems. Testing companies usually have many devices and tools available to cover as many testing scenarios as possible.

Our company has >700 devices and different tools available to test not only the main app, but also its battery drainage, CPU usage, different network connections, etc. Our device pool consists of high end devices (iPhone, Samsung etc.) and low end devices (Alcatel, Blue Studio Selfie, Just5, Meizu, Oppo, Prestigio etc.). Testing is done usually from many aspects and so it includes also feedback on the user experience the tester had. A lot of times tips from professionals can make a difference and help the product come as intuitive and userfriendly as possible for new users to use with ease and provide true value.

4. Customer Satisfaction

The ultimate goal for a product owner is to give the best customer satisfaction. Reasons why apps and software should be tested is to bring the best user experience possible. Being the best product in this saturated market will help you gain trustworthy clients which will have great long-term effects. Once users will have amazing customer experience they will, without a doubt, tell their friends and word to mouth will make it advertise itself, but this works both ways.

Customer trust is not easy to earn, especially if your product is glitching and functioning only 60% of the time. You are a user of many products and perhaps have had horrible experiences that made you delete the app and tell others not to use it. These days the market is so saturated that first impression is important, otherwise users will find another product that meets his needs.

All could be eliminated if you invest in testing at the start product development, because bringing the biggest value in this saturated market will make your business stand out.

• British Airways – For the sixth time last year – a major IT software failure led to massive cancellations on local flights and significant delays on international flights. According to NPR.org – it took over three days of cancellation chaos to resolve the problems that plagued BA during this outage.

This is just another example to illustrate how much of a chaos a small glitch in the system can have.

“We are happy with the TestDevLab work because they have a professional team and extensive experience in mobile testing,”  

—Jaan Murumets, SK ID Solutions Product Manager