Companies, employees, and consumers rely on software daily to help them do their jobs and complete essential tasks. This software is in our devices and on our screens. But when software isn’t working correctly, it can be frustrating and disruptive.
Among the many benefits of software testing are that engineers can fix any potential problems and improve features before the software goes live. Keep reading to learn how software testing can streamline your development to increase your profits – and the best ways to implement testing in software engineering.
Why Is Software Testing Important?
Software testing is an essential part of the design and development of new software. Why? Software testing assists engineers and project managers to deliver a high-quality product free of bugs and gaps in security – and ensure that your software is user-friendly and functions as intended.
Noteworthy stats on the importance of software testing:
- The cost of low-quality software in 2020 was $2 trillion, according to a Consortium of Information & Software Quality report.
- 67% of customer loss is due to bad experiences, including software bugs, security breaches, and app failures that are preventable with software testing.
- 76% of companies saw increased ROI within one year after implementing automated software testing.
When a software engineering team is deep into the weeds of a project, stress testing, integration testing, acceptance testing, regression testing, functionality testing, and more can seem daunting. But these types of testing are critical for large-scale software applications and apps with sensitive information.
Not all products are created equal. Think Tank QA can help with QA testing solutions.
Why QA?
QA stands for quality assurance. It’s an essential part of software development. Through testing, QA Engineers strive to help developers produce stable and functional products.
Software testing is often most associated with detecting bugs and errors. Truly assuring quality requires a team to go deeper, ensuring that the product functions in the way developers, investors, and consumers expect it and aligns with the software’s value proposition. QA should be part of any software development life cycle.
Quality Assurance entails checking for specific issues, including but not limited to:
- Broken code
- Identify gaps in requirements
- Browser and Device incompatibility
- Failure due to heavy traffic
- Identify new issues during regression testing
Benefits of Software Testing
Why is testing important for software engineers and project managers? It provides many benefits for business owners, developers, and customers. Benefits include increasing the product’s value, building brand loyalty, and improving company efficiency.
Here are the top seven benefits of software testing:
- Saves Money
- Produces a More Reliable (and Profitable) Product
- Delivers a Competitive Advantage
- Creates Happier Customers
- Improves Application Security
- Speeds Up Development
- Strengthens Organizational Efficiency
Think Tank QA provides hands-on test design, support, and execution. Get started today.
Saves Money
Fixing software once it’s already launched can be costly and time-consuming. Every second your software is down or not functioning correctly, you miss out on money-making opportunities. Even worse, repeated software issues can hurt your company’s reputation and cause you to lose customers, leading to lost revenue.
Investing in thorough embedded QA testing up-front can save the company money (and stress) in the long run.
Software testing can also speed up the recovery rate of software. Recovery is the time it takes after software fails before engineers restore normal functioning. A faster recovery rate means less money lost when there are inevitably issues with the software.
Produces a More Reliable (and Profitable) Product
Software testing plays a vital role in making the software more reliable for many potential users across multiple devices. It is typical for a product to go through many iterations. With quality assurance in software engineering process, developers go through as many iterations as needed before the product goes live. Embedded QA helps ensure that the users get the product’s best version.
Fewer iterations after going to market mean more money saved. A higher-quality product means customers will pay more for your software, or be more dedicated and active users. That’s why a more reliable product leads to higher profits.
Delivers a Competitive Advantage
With the ever-growing software options available, offering a product that stands out from the competition is essential. Testing allows developers to gather honest feedback from users about the software and how it compares to similar products. Finding gaps in the market can deliver a powerful competitive advantage.
Create a standardized QA test plan with the input of highly-skilled engineers and project managers to create profitable software while keeping production costs low. Then, automate as much of the process as possible to increase the efficacy of software testing and deployment.
Creates Happier Customers
Need more reasons why testing is important? Software testing can lead to happier customers by testing for user experience optimizations. QA testing is key to developing a product that people will not only buy, but return to over and over again. After all, an active (and happily advocating) user base is key to software profitability.
Happier customers are more likely to:
- Write positive reviews online
- Recommend the product to their colleagues, friends, and family
- Make additional purchases from the company
- Build a loyal customer base
The more reliable and user-friendly the software is, the more satisfied customers will be. Rather than guessing what consumers want from software in a saturated market, testing can give you a clear answer before you invest a ton of money into a product that may or may not perform in the marketplace.
Improves Application Security
Another critical purpose of software testing is to ensure application security. Data privacy continues to become more of a priority for consumers. A breach in software security that puts users’ information and devices at risk will most likely result in a loss of customers.
People want to know that crucial information will remain private. This vulnerable information includes:
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Birthdates
- Payment information
- Passwords
The importance of software testing for security cannot be overstated. Once a security breach occurs, it can be difficult for a business to recover, whether the breach is minor or significant in scale. Security-focused testing like penetration testing, and ensuring that developers are using best practices is the best way to prevent security breaches and build customer trust. Testing will also help increase customer loyalty to create long-term customers and brand advocates.
Speeds Up Development
Some software engineers, product owners, and business leaders are eager to get their products on the market as fast as possible. As a result, they may want to skip the quality assurance step. However, software testing throughout various stages can actually speed up development by giving engineers valuable feedback on what direction to go next.
Bringing in different perspectives can help design new software, so begin testing before the end of the development process. Incorporate testing into the project from the beginning and consistently during design and development. Finding minor issues and mistakes as they arise can prevent them from becoming more significant issues that are more time-consuming and costly to fix. Equally significant a contribution is evaluating and streamlining functionality and user workflows is best done early. Engaging the QA perspective early facilitates this.
Strengthens Organizational Efficiency
Engineers and project managers must go into emergency response mode when there is an issue with live software. This means stepping away from whatever new projects they are working on and lowering the company’s efficiency.
With testing in software engineering, developers troubleshoot as part of the development process to predict potential issues and remove the possibility of them occurring later on. If this is performed effectively, engineers can save time on troubleshooting once the software is live. They can focus on other projects to grow the business or improve existing software.
Limitations of Testing in Software Testing
Now that you understand the benefits of testing, it’s important to note that no software testing solution is perfect. So QA, engineers, and project managers should be realistic about the limitations of testing when planning and implementing.
- Budget and time constraints can prevent testing from being 100% effective.
- Additional issues may only be evident after full-scale deployment, or are the result of third party services experiencing their own issues.
- Sometimes the root causes of issues uncovered during testing are complex and require dedicated teams to identify and repair.
- Testing only delays release dates when the time for testing hasn’t been budgeted into the plan. When it has been budgeted successfully, then it’s the bugs that delay the release, not the testing.
While software quality assurance has pros and cons, hiring an external software testing company can help ensure the process is executed expertly. A software testing service can work directly with development managers and engineers to address immediate testing needs, and then train them to conduct QA and other tests for future projects independently.
QA teams like Think Tank QA can also develop test automation that can provide system monitoring, and automate repetitive tests, saving the engineers and QA teams valuable time and resources.
Complete Software Testing Solutions with Think Tank QA
The benefits of software testing are clear. It is a core strategy to efficiently create a reliable, secure, and profitable product. QA testing can help increase the company’s reputation, build a loyal customer base, and maximize your ROI.
Efficient software testing requires solid planning, asking the right questions, and setting clear goals. Think Tank QA helps you evaluate your software based on your value proposition to ensure you put the best product on the market.
Whether you need a software testing solution built from scratch or want to revamp your existing QA strategy, Think Tank QA can help. Contact us at info@thinktankqa.com or 612-321-8061 to learn more about how software testing can transform your products.