Waltham, MA - At AMC Bridge, we understand that delivering flawless software is crucial to our clients’ success. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, we've seen how insufficient testing can lead to poor user experiences, impact customer satisfaction, and damage reputations. However, Quality Assurance (QA) is much more than just testing; it is a vital component for project success. This article dives into the hidden risks of bypassing QA and demonstrates how properly established QA procedures can save you money in the long run and enhance project outcomes. Learn from our decades of experience.
Discover how QA can save you money in the long run and enhance project outcomes.
"One bug can affect hundreds of customers and cost you a fortune!"
All software has bugs. But the right questions are:
- How can we minimize or prevent them?
- What are the risks if we don’t?
- How will it impact your team, your budget, and your company's reputation?
Prevention is better than cure
One of the most frequent questions we receive here at AMC Bridge goes something like this: "What will happen if we do not have a QA procedure in place?"
Well, the consequences can be significant:
- Increased Cost: As software progresses through development, the cost of fixing bugs rises. Bugs found in later stages need more time and effort to identify, analyze, and rectify. The more complex or integrated your software, the harder it is to unravel a bug.
- Late Releases: If significant bugs are discovered close to a release deadline, the release may need to be postponed to ensure that the software meets quality standards. This impacts project timelines and customer satisfaction.
- Poor Quality: If bugs remain undetected, they result in a lower-quality product and impact the user experience, functionality, and overall reliability of the software.
- Reputational Damage: Bugs discovered after release negatively impact the user experience, cause customer dissatisfaction, and damage the reputation of the product, the development team, and the company.
Without QA services, software development becomes a minefield of errors that cause significant disruptions to your and your customer’s business. Let's take a deep breath and dive a bit deeper.
Do you know the actual cost of failing to catch bugs in the right place at the right time?
- Let’s say a simple bug is identified during coding and takes 5 hours to fix in QA and developer time. Let’s assume the cost is $200.
- If found during later stages, fixing it can take 40 times longer, roughly 200 hours and costing $8,000.
- If it’s not discovered until after release, it can cost an astronomical sum, in our example, an overwhelming 3,200 hours (20 man-months) and $128,000.
A risk to your budget and your reputation
You may be asking yourself, "Why do I need dedicated QA services when my development team can handle testing?"
While your team may identify bugs, Quality Assurance isn’t just about testing. Here are a few reasons why incorporating QA services right from the beginning of your project is crucial:
- Requirements Analysis: Involving QA in the requirements discussion helps ensure that product requirements are clear, complete, and well-defined, including the definition of "Done". It helps prevent defects from occurring in the first place, mitigates the risk of failure, and minimizes costly rework later on.
- Objective Testing: Your development team might have subjective opinions of the software, which leads to biased evaluations and critical issues being overlooked.
- Thorough Testing: Developers might not have enough time to perform comprehensive testing and only test the Happy Path. Missed bugs lead to delays in release and impact your revenue.
- Bug Reproduction Problems: Without documented testing, it can be challenging to reproduce bugs, leading to extra time investigating the issues.
- Poor User Experience: Software that is not tested thoroughly can lead to poor user experience, impacting customer satisfaction.
- Increase Efficiency: Incorporating QA services from the beginning helps streamline the development process, increasing developers' efficiency and reducing total development time.
A balance between testing by developers and dedicated QA professionals is the optimal approach.
It ensures that testing is comprehensive, unbiased, and efficient while also allowing developers to focus on coding and innovation.
A Wise Investment for Long-Term Success
Investing in QA helps build a resilient release process and win the market.
- Predict budget and save time. Without suitable QA, you cannot accurately predict and manage your development budget. Overspending can occur if your developers waste valuable time discovering bugs instead of writing code or if you have to find and fix them after coding is completed.
- Identify and mitigate risks. Identify potential risks and issues early in the development cycle and save time, money, and resources.
- Improve product quality. Include QA early on and rest assured the product is being developed with quality in mind from the outset, rather than trying to find and fix issues later on.
Bugbusters in Action: Freshly-smashed Customer Experience
Client
The client is a machinery company that produces and sells both hardware and software supporting the processes.
Challenge
- The client's main business is hardware; the focus on software was secondary, and the QA processes were not correctly established.
- The ratio of QA engineers to developers was too low: compared to the recommended ratio of 1:3/1:4, the actual ratio was 1:10.
- The QA situation was stuck due to budgetary and priority reasons, and many QA engineers used ad-hoc methods, preferring to test on real hardware after development, which was more of an acceptance check than quality assurance.
What was done
- The AMC Bridge team investigated all projects in the client's product teams and analyzed the software development process from requirements engineering to release management.
- Based on our findings, we created a strategy to improve the process and incorporate Quality Assurance activities appropriately and efficiently throughout development.
Result
The project was a success, and our proposal provided a roadmap for the client to improve their development and QA processes in the future.
Although we cannot share the exact findings for each project, we can confidently say that our actions have satisfied those who entrusted us with their projects.
Why AMC Bridge
Skills and Expertise
- Dedicated Quality Assurance department led by a director with 15 years of experience
- Deep understanding of software development and testing methodologies
- Extensive project experience and advanced technical skills
- Knowledge of mechanical and architectural design and other engineering-specific areas
- Highly trained mechanical engineers and AEC professionals (we even have 2 PhDs on the team)
Technologies
- Proficiency with a wide range of advanced tools, using automation tools and performance testing frameworks to enhance testing efficiency
Approach
- Involved from the initial stages of development, contributing to requirement analysis, risk assessment, test planning, test data creation
- Proactive and systematic approach to testing
Integrating QA services into development as an ongoing process throughout the production cycle is the single most effective way to prevent errors, catch bugs early on and, ultimately, decrease costs, improve timelines, increase quality, and deliver a better user experience.
About AMC Bridge
AMC Bridge is a global software development consultancy serving engineering, manufacturing, and construction industries. Since 1999, we have enabled digital transformation for our clients by creating custom software solutions that eliminate data silos, connect complex applications, unlock internal innovation, and democratize cutting-edge technologies. AMC Bridge’s software development experts use extensive experience with APIs of the majority of engineering software solutions and platforms, as well as in-depth knowledge of computational geometry, 3D visualization, and other advanced technologies, to solve our clients’ critical business needs. For more information, visit amcbridge.com.
