Better testing, is it necessary?

While some organisations still see testing as a necessary evil, more and more companies are working on a better and smarter way to organise the testing process. In this blog, we will not focus on the improvements themselves, but we will look at the five most important reasons to improve the testing process.

Higher quality

The most obvious reason to improve testing is to increase and/or secure quality. Although testing in itself does not increase quality, structured testing makes the quality - or lack of quality - of the various components transparent, prior to implementation. There are plenty of examples of organisations that have suffered considerable damage due to ICT problems. Often problems that could have been prevented if there had been proper testing. The website www.alsbestegetest.nl contains many appealing examples.

Lower costs

Many costs attributable to testing remain hidden. Consider, for example, employees in the business who are involved in testing as core users with no visibility into the time spent. An immature testing process results in a lot of cutting losses resulting in longer lead times. This costs all involved a lot of valuable time. Time and therefore money can be saved by making test cases reusable, testing only the most important components, setting up a proper findings procedure and coordinating the test cycle centrally using a test management tool.

Boehm's law (from 1979) still applies. As a reminder, remediation costs increase exponentially with each step that a bug gets closer to the production environment. There are many examples of situations where companies incur hefty costs to fix ICT problems at a late stage. When problems only occur in the production environment, there are often additional costs due to image damage, lost sales, claims, etc.

Meeting compliancy guidelines

More and more often, companies are being reprimanded during an audit or control. The most important reason: not having the change process in order, and especially the burden of proof concerning testing. A well-organised test process provides simple and quick insight into the various actions performed: Who tested what? Who tested what? When? And with what result?

Shorten time-to-market

Although many companies consider testing to be not very strategic, there is indeed a strategic advantage to a mature testing process. If one fails to identify errors early on in the testing phase, a lot of time is lost in fixing these errors in production (see also the first two points: higher quality and lower costs). Resolving a production disruption calls on the often already scarce development capacity. Also consider the extra effort for re-testing the bug, extra regression testing effort from the business, extra transports, etc.

Put in positive terms: A streamlined test process makes it possible to implement wishes from the business more quickly. A short time-to-market for IT changes is increasingly becoming an important competitive advantage.

Creating space for innovations

In addition to the previous point, there is another reason why it is increasingly important not to waste too much time on an inefficient test process and on solving problems in production. Structurally, washing up with the tap on, not only increases the time-to-market, it also limits the room for innovation because people are too busy maintaining the current ICT.

Decide for yourself whether better testing is necessary!

Testersuite believes that investing in smarter and better testing should not be an end in itself. If you recognize one or more of the above reasons, we are convinced that a no-obligation meeting with our experts is more than worthwhile. Interested? Mail to info@testersuite.nl or call 073 711 45 20. You can also request an online demo directly. During a demo we will discuss your situation and advise you on possible improvements without any obligation.

‍