5 Reasons Why Software Testing is Important

Why Do We Need to Test Software?

On December 14, 2020, Google experienced a widespread outage that affected several of its services, including Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, and Google Docs. The outage lasted about an hour, and users worldwide reported issues accessing and using these services.

The culprit of this catastrophic outage? A software error that resulted in a storage deficit which directly impacted the company’s authentication tools. This case shows that even massive tech companies such as Google will deal with software failures, proving that whether you’re a mom-and-pop shop or an industry giant, you aren’t exempt from precautionary software testing. 

When it comes to software tests, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A proactively-minded software testing strategy is not only the best way to identify and remedy existing software errors, but also a wise approach to preventing future errors from compromising a company’s productivity and bottom line. 

The Value of Testing in the Software Development Life Cycle

Software testing is crucial in software development because it helps identify potential issues and bugs before reaching the end user. For example, stress tests that push software to hit upper limit thresholds detect performance issues and potential bottlenecks in real-world scenarios.

Additionally, forecasting and thinking through potential error test cases can help prevent serious issues that could damage the software’s reputation and user experience.

Furthermore, having a dedicated QA team is valuable because it allows developers to focus on building and improving their software while ensuring its quality and performance meet industry standards. As a result, this division of labor can help increase efficiency and prevent delays in the software development process.

Software testing helps ensure multiple aspects of software success, such as user satisfaction, brand trustworthiness, and profitability. For example, a bug-free software product enhances customer experience and increases user engagement, leading to better customer retention and acquisition. Additionally, a reliable software product can improve brand reputation and lead to increased revenue in the long term.

Ensuring that software products are reliable, functional, and meet user expectations is why we need to test software as often as possible. It helps identify potential bugs, improve user experience, and ultimately drive business success.

The Business Case for Software Testing

In addition to ensuring the quality of a product, software testing is also beneficial for the success of a software company. With a thorough quality assurance process, development and maintenance costs can be reduced, and the cost-effectiveness of software development can be improved, increasing a company’s profit margins. And there are more business advantages in reducing costs and maintaining economic but impactful practices.

For example, an adequately tested software product often has higher user acquisition and conversion rates and creates greater trust in the product’s brand. Another fiscal advantage of software testing is that it produces a more sustainable product that requires less time and resources to debug and patch after its release.

Furthermore, well-tested pieces of software facilitate a smoother sales process, as they can reliably be used during public demos or in client sales meetings, showing off the software’s full capabilities without issue and thus converting prospects into paying customers.

On the other hand, failing to implement software testing causes issues across the board. Consistent errors in both new and legacy systems will force developers to invest more time and resources in quality assurance than in the software product they are developing. On top of that, continual software errors can also result in rapid customer churn, impacting the company’s future within a short period.

Rather than spending 20% of their time fixing bugs instead of innovating new software components and features, developers can save their most valuable resource by relying on a team of quality assurance experts like XBOSoft. Our software testers offer decades of experience and transparent services so your development team can get the additional resources they need to stay focused without stretching themselves thin.

5 Reasons Why Software Testing is Important

The most effective way to perform software testing is by framing the testing process to be proactive – to seek and repair each software bug early on. Whereas a reactive software testing process considers errors and bugs after development, a proactive approach uses developers’ time and resources more effectively. A proactive mindset to software testing makes it essential to develop software applications for several reasons.

#1: Increased Security

In March 2020, the core banking software provider, Finastra, was forced to shut down its servers after its IT security team detected an attacker within their network attempting to install ransomware within company operating systems. Fortunately, the team discovered the attempt early on and could shut down the company’s servers temporarily and contain the threat before any real harm was done.

However, how could they have prevented the hacker from entering their system and potentially causing tremendous damage? Assessing and detecting errors in their software through regularly scheduled software testing. Hackers and digital criminals are always looking for new software exploits and vulnerabilities to take advantage of.

Whether through manual testing or with automated tools, the reason why software testing is important is because it helps you search for any cracks within your system, ensuring you proactively find and resolve potential vulnerabilities before they can be used against you. While reactive techniques such as firewalls and anti-virus software provide protection, those alone are not enough to secure you from software failure from system breaches.

#2: High-Quality Product

Another point showing why software testing is important is that it ensures consistently high product quality in the long term. Whether it’s an app, a website, or essential industry-grade software, quality assurance through software testing will help preserve and grow your user base.

In addition, because of your software’s excellent standards in usability, functionality, and reliability, you’ll enjoy lower costs from maintenance and redevelopment, a high brand authority that will help retain and convert customers, and the ability to price your software at a premium, raising ever greater profit margins. These are all achieved through software testing and, through it, providing a quality user experience.

#3: Smooth Customer Experience

Yet another reason why we need to test software is to develop a high-quality product with a seamless customer experience, including the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). Providing an outstanding customer experience thereby generates high customer satisfaction, which is integral to the success of any website, app, or software program.

On the other hand, after bearing poor design or functionality and encountering numerous errors in user flows, most customers will quickly abandon the product in search of a more usable and smooth experience. Worse still, they will spread the news of its poor quality by word of mouth or online reviews, which have become particularly influential.

To ensure that your product provides a quality experience to customers, you should consistently perform software tests across various issues – perhaps with careful integration testing- and through a series of varying methods via manual or automated tools. Extensive software testing will result in a product with a seamless, enjoyable, and, most of all, valuable customer experience.

#4: A Leaner Software Development Process

Software development consists of several challenging stages filled with heavy workloads from one to the next. To help expedite the development process, companies follow an Agile methodology in their projects to maintain high efficiency and collaboration across teams inhabiting each stage. Why we need to test software using Agile is because it allows testing to occur simultaneously with other aspects of software development.

Because of this, the development team continuously receives test feedback that helps them detect and fix bugs early in the development cycle, thus reducing the amount of necessary work later on. Moreover, as Agile emphasizes continuous and iterative development, these software tests also provide a benchmark for success when the team performs fixes later.

#5: Scale Software Faster with Better Code & Fewer Bugs

A final reason why we need to test software is because it secures the reliability of software code as it scales. With better, cleaner, and more correctly-written code, you’ll have a codebase that is error-free and much easier to add new code into, thus allowing you to scale the software faster.

In addition, performing software tests to relieve the backend of errors or poorly written code also helps mitigate complexity, creating a more stable codebase. In this ideal environment, software testers can help further enhance the code of the product and support the developers in deploying new features with minimal bugs and at a faster pace.

Conclusion

There are many reasons why software testing is important, and furthermore, vital to software engineering and development. It ensures that product developers create work reliably, free of bugs and awkward interfaces, generating customer satisfaction and a successful, profitable business.

However, software testing is also a rigorous and time-consuming process, especially for development teams that are more experienced in innovating new features and less in identifying and solving software errors.

To save valuable time and resources for your software development team, consider working with XBOSoft. Our top-notch software testing experts are highly experienced in various essential software testing solutions and methodologies. We can help optimize your software development life cycle and ensure you produce the best products possible. Reach out to us and receive a free consultation today.