Did you know that The Systems Sciences Institute at IBM released a report that the cost of fixing an error after the product was released was four to five times more expensive than fixing it during the design stage? And that the same error would cost 100 times more than one found in the maintenance phase?
Adopting a “prevention-first” strategy when it comes to quality assurance and product management can save serious time, money and energy. The earlier a mistake is identified and fixed during the development process, the cheaper and easier it will be.
Here are some tips on how to implement a proactive QA strategy:
1. Employ Rigorous Software Requirements Analysis
According to Computer Finance Magazine, errors in software requirements and design are 45% more frequent than errors in source code. It is critical to conduct a thorough analysis of all software requirements and root out potential errors and defects from the outset. If not, you’ll end up paying a lot more to fix them down the road.
2. Have Your Development Team Peer Review Code
In product management, several sets of eyes are always better than one. Employ this principal during the coding stage and have every member of your development team review code for potential errors and bugs. The National Institute of Standard Technology (NIST) published a study in 2002 that found the cost of fixing a single bug in the production stage of software is 15 hours, compared to five hours if the same bug were found in the coding stage.
3. Direct Your Development Team To Target And Prevent Systematic Defects
Usually, systematic errors can account for a majority of the problems discovered. In product management, errors of these nature can have a large negative impact on the end product. Rooting out and solving systematic errors earlier in the production process can lead to significant cost and time savings.
4. Use Crowdtesting
QA testing lets you access more than 35,000 testers around the world for your bug hunts and structured QA tests. Even with the most rigorous proactive QA strategy, all mobile apps and web-based software need to be thoroughly tested to ensure that they are bug-free.
