Cut your IT development delivery costs by 30%! Does this sound like fiction to you? Read on, your goals and targets may be way too conservative.
The mission and business-critical nature of IT is no longer disputed. Yet many managers and project teams are not aware or knowledgeable enough about a key component of IT differentiation, namely software testing.
Copycat offerings (of higher quality) will surpass your own initiative within three to twelve months.
Wayne Mallinson, Editor, Test Focus
The IT industry is reaching adolescence, with multiple factors driving its growing maturity. Globalisation, accompanied by international competition and standardisation, require us to be aware of worldwide trends as well as local factors. Increasing local competition, litigation, industry experience, and user sophistication are some of the key local drivers of the local IT maturation process.
It is no longer good enough to have a great business idea. For success it is imperative that such an idea is supported swiftly and accurately by a high-quality software implementation. If implementation is delayed, or poor, one`s whole business may be in jeopardy. Copycat offerings (of higher quality) will surpass your own initiative within three to twelve months.
Holistic approach
To properly understand testing, one needs to know that testing comprises two essential approaches, namely verification and validation. Most managers have a reasonable, high-level understanding of validation, which is executing the software and determining whether it meets the users` requirements or not. Validation testing in isolation, however, is inherently flawed as a holistic approach to testing. At the stage of validation testing, the product is already created at a fixed quality, and the testing can only identify the numerous failings.
The milk is spilt and tears will be of no avail. Damage control, in the form of expensive swat teams, additional maintenance support, travel expenses, huge clean-up validation testing initiatives, customer pacification and other remedies will be the real cost of the lack of earlier investment in testing.
Furthermore, the correction of defects at this late stage is inherently inefficient, with numerous documented studies showing an approximately ten-fold improvement in software maintenance productivity for software which has passed through effective verification testing.
Verification testing is testing of the software products that proceed execution of the code, for example, project management plans, user requirements specifications, designs and code listings. The means by which your company undertakes its verification testing is a significant differentiator.
Testing is a specialisation; in fact there are specialisations within testing itself. The proper management of effective testing within major organisations has significantly contributed towards published results like that of Raytheon. In 1995, Raytheon reported more than 30% cost reduction in its software non-conformances, as well as a calculated 7.7-fold return on investment for the initiatives that resulted in this.
As early as 1992, IBM reported an 82% plus defect removal rate prior to development testing, as a result of effective software verification techniques.
Fuzzy area
In 1981 Boehm studied 63 projects and was able to show that for these projects, if the cost of fixing a defect in the requirements stage was one hour, it would cost 15 to 70 hours to repair the same defect, if it was only detected during validation testing (unit, integration, system and acceptance execution of the code).
Speaking with one IT manager this past week, he expressed that testing was "a bit of a fuzzy area", and this I have noted to be a common notion among the majority of South African and even American IT managers. I`ll be quick to point out though, that the situation is rapidly changing because of the huge business stakes involved.
Testing need not be "fuzzy". The fact is, that effective verification and validation testing methods, with accompanying reporting, allow managers to have more regular management check points on all their products necessary for software construction. This should happen throughout the development cycle and is a factor which promotes IT project success.
If, as a manager (or tester), you can`t answer the following questions at any software development lifecycle stage, you need to do further work on your company/project testing initiatives:
- What are the detailed testing tasks for this SDLC stage?
- How many persons will be required for the testing, and what skill sets should they have?
- What is the detailed testing schedule and budget, and how does this relate to deliverables?
- What would the alternative additional expense be if testing were omitted or ineffective?
- Exactly what percentage of defects are being found by testing and when? Based on these measures, is the testing cost-effective?
- What is the average quality of software documentation, in defects per page?
- How many requirements are there for testing in the XYZ subsystem?
- How many test procedures are ready for execution?
- Is our testing effectiveness static, improving, or worsening?
- Which of our high-risk requirements have related known, but unsolved defects?
- Approximately how many developers will be needed to repair new defects likely to be found next month?
- What are the 10 most common major defects that our team injects into the products?
- Have we reduced the introduction of the most common defect types over the past three months?
- How many security requirements are there, compared to usability requirements?
- What is the cost-effectiveness of our unit testing when compared to our code inspections?
- When will the build be ready for release?
- What quality will the build be at release?
- And another 50 or so other questions that the lack of space restricts me from asking.
A word of caution: The benefits to be derived from effective testing result from knowledgeable and targeted management and team focus over time. The nature of the gains is substantial, but there is nothing easy about achieving such gains.
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