Almost 10 years ago, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued a now famous report, Software Errors Cost U.S. Economy $59.5 Billion Annually or 0.6% of the US GDP. Switch forward 10 years and the situation has not improved.

The report was very to the point. Software bugs, especially those related to the lack of proper software testing, are very costly to the US economy.

The study found that more than a third of these costs, an estimated $22.2 billion, (in 2002 dollars) could be eliminated by an improved testing infrastructure that enables earlier and more effective identification and removal of software defects.

Software testing needs to be a MUST DO activity of every software project and in the maintenance lifecycle of every software application.

Because so much of today’s testing is still done manually, there is, even in 2012, lots of room for efficiencies and improvements in the testing cycle.

Worst software bugs

Every year we hear “horror stories” about malfunctions, time lost, lives hurt and even catastrophes caused by software errors.
Here are some examples:

History’s worst software bugs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs

Collection of Software Bugs
http://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/bugse.html

Software is complicated and will always have bugs. It is our job, as testers, application developers or CIOs, to ensure that software is as bug-free as possible.

The Solution

Automating the testing process increases tester efficiency and throughput and is the most certain way to ensure higher quality code. The result is fewer errors and increased programmer productivity.

Eliminating the testing of irrelevant fields and emphasizing the testing of essential fields enables testers to focus on the most important and critical parts of an application.

Enabling multiple testers to work simultaneously in multiple environments also increases tester efficiency. This allows more tests to run at the same time and enables software to be tested more thoroughly.

“The path to higher software quality is significantly improved software testing”. This has always been true and is true today.

Make the MOST of your mainframe applications.
For more information about MOST Technologies, MF-Test and automated mainframe application regression testing, fill out our contact form today.