In 2017, software failures cost the economy US$ 1.7 trillion in financial losses. In total, software failures at 314 companies affected 3.6 billion people and caused more than 268 years in downtime.<\/p>\n
Software failures can prove to be the nemesis of organizations in this world of digital transformations as they can cause an undeniable harm. Any software failure thus sounds off an alarm that needs to be taken care of immediately in the C-suite. The best way is to learn from others\u2019 mistakes, as opposed to learning from your own software failures. Catastrophic software failures in the recent years are reminders to the fact that can organizations must pay heed to identify ways and means to control such failures. One of the most common ways is to pay proper heed to, and implement continuous software testing.<\/p>\n
Per Gartner: \u201cApplication leaders who are modernizing application development face an increasing need to deliver applications faster and of higher quality.” Continuous testing is one of the major enablers for implementing DevOps practices.<\/p>\n
A study led by Forrester analyst Diego Lo Giudice and commissioned by Tricentis, found that organizations that invest in agile and DevOps initiatives make active efforts to transform their software testing practices into continuous testing practices. The study concludes that successful organizations allocate proper testing budgets, focus on improving skills, implement continuous testing and automate end-to-end functional testing to meet the demands of release frequency, integrate testers into cross-functional teams, and practice shift-left testing.<\/p>\n
These reports make it clear that software companies are adopting, and adapting new technologies to overcome the challenges of software failures, each of which has a lethal impact on reputation, net profit, and customer satisfaction. The aftermath of each major failure disperses far and wide over the Internet and the news, maligning the business for years.<\/p>\n
Before getting into what businesses can do to take prevent software failures, let\u2019s take a quick look at a few major software failures<\/a> that occurred in the past two years across industries, and the kind of impact they had on businesses.<\/p>\n Reasons for software failures <\/strong><\/p>\n In an attempt to accomplish customer demand, which changes every minute with more customers asking rather demanding for better, more enhanced, technologically perfect products, many companies face the challenge of providing optimal quality, functionality, as well as performance. Failure of implementing and practicing the latest & best technologies leads to lack of quality, security, and performance of the software in question. The inability and complications involved in putting together the right team with the right skill sets in addition to the fast pace driven by DevOps and Agile methodologies tends to expose inadequacies and limitations within any software.<\/p>\n Employees across organizations feel that they don\u2019t have enough time to dedicate to testing of new apps and services being pushed into production without going through proper QA procedures. This is where thorough, end-to-end, automated and continuous testing can play a critical role.<\/p>\n Continuous testing is the answer to software failures.<\/strong><\/p>\n Continuous Testing helps organizations deliver robust, quality software at faster go-to-market speeds. Continuous Testing involves execution of automated tests that provide fast and continuous feedback about the business risks involved in the software. This leads to reduced waiting time and saves huge costs later.<\/p>\n Continuous testing with incorporation of AI in test automation efforts helps enterprises to market challenges and also accomplish the rigorous quality standards necessary to achieve anticipated business outcomes. Implementing a broader and more cohesive approach, continuous testing facilitates businesses in comprehending where they can and should and shouldn\u2019t automate for optimum results. Using continuous testing<\/a>, businesses can align their systems, processes, QA engineering, and test automation. C-suite will witness fast-tracking cycle time and real business outcomes, including sophisticated quality products and services, improved customer experience, competitive differentiation, and operational efficiency. Additionally, continuous testing increases the flexibility of delivery organization to adjust to changes in the business.<\/p>\n Wikipedia<\/a> states it best when it says \u201cWhen software quality efforts and testing are aligned with business expectations, test execution produces a prioritized list of actionable tasks (rather than a potentially overwhelming number of findings that require manual review). This helps teams focus their efforts on the quality tasks that will have the greatest impact, based on their organization’s goals and priorities.<\/p>\n Additionally, when teams are continuously executing a broad set of continuous tests throughout the SDLC, they amass metrics regarding the quality of the process as well as the state of the software. The resulting metrics can be used to re-examine and optimize the process itself, including the effectiveness of those tests. This information can be used to establish a feedback loop that helps teams incrementally improve the process. Frequent measurement, tight feedback loops, and continuous improvement are key principles of DevOps.\u201d<\/p>\n Gartner estimates that \u201cBy 2020, DevOps initiatives will cause 50% of enterprises to implement continuous testing using frameworks and open-source tools.\u201d Continuous Testing has been an enabler throughout for enterprises, but it is equally important to incorporate the right approach and the required factors to make it work for your organization.<\/p>\n Continuous testing acts as the key driver for DevOps initiatives to yield desired outcomes. Cigniti\u2019s Continuous Integration (CI) testing experts<\/a> boast of a rich experience and can configure and execute popular CI tools such as Agile GO, Cruise Control, Chef, Puppet, Microsoft TFS, Jenkins, Bamboo, Hudson and so on, helping client\u2019s DevOps teams. Connect<\/a> with our experts and check out Cigniti\u2019s DevOps Test Center of Excellence that extends a host of services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2017, software failures cost the economy US$ 1.7 trillion in financial losses. In total, software failures at 314 companies affected 3.6 billion people and caused more than 268 years in downtime. Software failures can prove to be the nemesis of organizations in this world of digital transformations as they can cause an undeniable harm. 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