Software Testing Cost Enhancement Strategies
Minna is a content developer specializing in software testing and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). She enjoys exploring the intricacies of cutting-edge software and knits comprehensible content that resonates with the audience. PS, she is a book lover.
Six months ago, the UK experienced widespread chaos in its air traffic system, capturing headlines across various media outlets. The disruption ensued because the system wasn’t tested thoroughly, and as a result failed to recognize a crucial message. It was estimated that this failure could potentially cost up to £100 million. Well, this sums up the importance of testing and how much it costs if anything messes up.
But optimizing software testing is costly! Before exploring the ways to optimize the software testing costs, let’s see what drives the budget plan.
What are the factors affecting software testing costs?
Well, there are several factors that can be categorized under cost drivers.
Software complexity is one of the significant factors as they tend to have more intricate code paths, dependencies, and interactions which might need specialized testing techniques such as boundary value analysis, equivalence partitioning and combinatorial testing. Implementing these techniques often requires skilled testers and specialized tools contributing to testing costs.
Next comes investing in a robust testing infrastructure, including hardware, software, and network resources, along with advanced testing tools, may initially incur expenses. However, it can result in more efficient testing processes, enhanced test coverage, and shorter testing times. Conversely, inadequate infrastructure or outdated tools may impede testing efforts.
Even Changes made to the software can result in additional testing efforts, particularly regression testing, to ensure that new features or modifications do not introduce defects or impact existing functionality. Effective management of requirements and scope is crucial for minimizing testing costs and adhering to project timelines.
In the traditional SDLC, testing typically occurs at the cycle’s last stage. However, the issue lies in the fact that while a bug discovered during conception is nearly cost-free, its detection after implementation or testing can amplify repair costs by 10 to 1000 times. When customers encounter such a bug in the production environment, costs escalate significantly due to associated side effects, making the situation more severe.
On top of all these factors, the teams’ product knowledge plays a vital role, as it influences testing costs by impacting their ability to comprehend the software’s complexity. A lack of product understanding can result in ineffective testing, overlooked defects, and increased expenses related to resolving defects and retesting.
Ways to minimize the Software testing Cost
Test automation is not always naturally integrated into the development process but organized as a separate activity, independent from development and testing itself. – World Quality Report
In most of the organizations, testers and developers work in silos. This can lead to disjointed efforts and a lack of communication. What happens as a result is – a huge backlog of test automation backlogs, and the team may not be able to keep up with the changes in the product.
Test earlier in development phase and test frequent.
In today’s SDLC landscape, everything works in collaboration like Agile approach. But the real problem is the concept of Agile tends to lose its meaning as it has different interpretations in each organization.
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Next thought to ponder is, prioritizing automated test over manual tests. Spending excessive hours and manual labor to identify bugs is not feasible in this competitive market. customers getting unhappy because of bugs slipping through in the final product and dealing with expensive downtimes caused by features not being tested well enough are also big reasons for this.
What is the role of test automation in cost reduction?
The cost of automation is higher when compared to manual testing in the short term as automation requires upfront investments in equipment, software, training etc. However, over the long run, the benefits of automation can offset these costs.
The best way of calculating your test automation ROI can be found from the formula given below:
ROI = Savings / Investment
Here, savings denotes the budgetary costs saved by replacing manual tests with automated scripts and investments are the costs required to set up the automation test scripts.
To explain this further, savings can be broken down into
Savings = (time to run a single manual test – time to run the same test in automation) * number of tests * number of test runs
And, Investment can be shown as,
Investment = (time required to build frameworks + maintenance cost + (time to code one tests X number of tests))
Given the fact that,
- The time needed to develop frameworks can be standardized to a set value depending on the specific test team.
- Maintenance costs can be normalized based on the scale of the project.
- The time taken to create a test script can be averaged using past tests written for similar functions.
In addition, automated testing enables seamless continuous testing, executing a multitude of tests per hour, thereby minimizing testing times and lowering overall testing costs. This efficiency improvement reduces manual effort, enabling teams to focus on higher-value tasks.
Implement Test Driven Development (TDD) where unit tests are designed before writing a single line of code. This is because developers write failing unit tests based on the desired functionality before implementing the corresponding production code. These failing tests serve as a blueprint for coding, outlining the requirements and specifications that need to be met. Integrate TDD into the continuous integration (CI) process, as it ensures that new code changes do not break existing functionality and helps catch defects early in the development process.
Implement risk-based testing approach to identify major problems early in the anticipated risk areas. So,
How can we identify unnecessary test cases?
Every software product undergoes changes as their business expands, and so will be the case of changes to the software requirements. Understanding these changes is crucial for identifying whether existing test cases still stay valid to the updated requirements. Once that’s in place we can move to prioritizing.
Prioritizing test cases holds a significant relevance as it analyses which set of test cases comes in paramount importance when new updates are added to the software. And the parameters for prioritizing test cases are test coverage, test frequency and test severity. With these criteria you will be able to classify test cases as – stable areas, high impact areas and low impact areas.
Test case duplication is another factor when it comes to identifying unnecessary tests. But this can be solved with the help of test management tools, code analysis tools or even manual reviews.
Next step is partner with outsourcing testing vendors, as their expertise and experience can bring in more efficiency to deliver quality product on time to market. But that leaves a big question for you answer…
When is outsourcing testing activities a viable option?
The following are the reasons why organizations go with outsourcing testing activities.
- When an organization lacks the appropriate testing resources, skills, or capacity to conduct tests.
- When there’s a lack of testing experience, toolsets, or efficient testing processes and methodologies within the organization.
- During periods of tight full-time employee headcounts.
- To augment testing resources for a specific project duration.
- When the organization seeks to relieve skilled personnel from testing tasks to focus on core functional areas.
- When cost reduction is desired through an outsourcing testing model.
Yet now we haven’t touched on the internal factors among employees. Though we have spoken about test automation, TDD and agile way of testing it is equally important to look at the testing team as a relevant aspect.
The testing team should have a right balance between experienced testers and juniors so that experience and fresh aspects can contribute equally to the success of the project. At the same time, the testing team should be provided with proper training in order to sharpen their skill sets and knowledge. Also, it involves cross-training team members so they can share the workload, especially during busy or high-pressure situations.
Testers should have an understanding of product or industry market along with consumers’ demand can contribute exceptional quality with proactive recommendations and suggestions.
All these to happen as we have already discussed, always try to bring in the testing team early in the development cycle to have better product understanding, giving better test strategy.
Last but not least, investing in appropriate testing tools for test management, defect management, functional and non-functional test automation, test infrastructure, test framework can improve performance and accuracy in the long run.
Zuci has seen through many of its clients how testing can change the face of their product and can bring smiles to a customer’s face. We believe quality is everyone’s responsibility. We are ready to be a part of your quality journey.
Take a look at Zuci’s software testing services and see how you can leverage Zuci for your business needs.
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