Testing

Testing - the unnecessary cost of a project?

‘Adding a tester to a development team is just an unnecessary cost and a waste of money.’ Have you encountered such opinions during meetings with clients? Or worse, during internal meetings in the company? Difficult times in the IT market force us to seek savings. Why is it not worth saving on tests? I will try to show this in the text below.

Testing

What does testing protect against?

The most important thing is to understand the benefits of identifying software defects, as testing is essentially about finding bugs. These bugs can take on various forms, including those related to a misunderstanding of client requirements or a failure to adapt those requirements to meet end user expectations. This can be dangerous, as the end product may fail to meet the client's expectations or even be completely useless and ineffective.

Non-intuitive and error-prone software can discourage users from using it, reduce satisfaction, and ultimately erode trust in the company. Performance errors are a problem of a completely different scale - in extreme cases, they can cause system failure. Consider the potential losses from a service outage during a high-volume event like Black Friday. Customers won't wait indefinitely for the service to be restored and may turn to the competition. That's why it's crucial to invest in testing and ensure that software is not only functional but also user-friendly and reliable

Another element that tests will focus on is data security. Leakage of critical customer data can destroy the company's image, and the loss of customers can even lead to its bankruptcy.

Testing

Best time to add a tester

Now that we know how important testing is, the question remains of when is the best time to add a tester to the development team? As early as possible. Early testing reduces repair costs. Fixing defects at an early stage of production is much cheaper and faster than on a finished product, where many dependencies have already accumulated around error-prone functionalities.

Moreover, it should be remembered that early testing can shorten the production process. How is this possible? If a developer receives information about defects immediately after writing the functionality, he is still familiar with the code and does not need extra time to remind himself how the functionality works. This avoids the need for context switching, ultimately saving time and speeding up the production process.

At Goodylabs, we don't save on testing because we know it's a false economy. We try to involve testers from the very beginning of the production process. Software quality, and therefore customer and end-user satisfaction, are our priority.