Local businesses are wasting up to 50 percent of software development budgets because they lack the resources, tools and knowledge to conduct efficient software testing, according to market analysts.
Gartner application development analyst Partha Iyengar said shrinking time-to-market project deadlines and naivety about the benefits of software testing means that businesses are missing out on an opportunity to streamline and improve the quality of software development.
"The quicker turnaround of application development is affecting quality [and] regulatory issues and pressure to meet customer demand can directly impact the testing effort, which is why software testing will become centre stage," Iyengar said.
"A strong [software testing life-cycle] moves from testing the quality of software, to building quality into software, but this type of change is beyond most enterprises and most will need some form of third-party assistance.
"Software testing typically consumes about 25 percent of resources, including time frames and budgets, however most companies spend 45 to 50 percent in a typical testing life-cycle," he said.
He said most money is lost in rectifying post-implementation mistakes which originate in the initial requirements phase.
The lack of [industrial] benchmarking controls is a big problem for software testers because there isn't a culture of benchmarking in software development,
Post-implementation application errors are more damaging to business because of shrinking time-to-market deadlines, which increase regulatory, customer and competitive demands.
While large US and European corporates have recognized the importance of software testing, those which outsource the process are struggling to tie it to software development.
Iyengar said this failure undermines the effectiveness of software testing because the testers will not fully understand the project requirements, and the disconnect is heightened when the process is outsourced.
"Software testing is only successful in a mature organization which has strong knowledge of software development methodology," Iyengar said.
He said the attitude Australian businesses have to software testing is so far behind the US that they "do not even consider [software] testing as separate from development".
However, testing is set to take off in Australia over the next few years beginning with the largest enterprises, as quality improvements become more obvious in larger projects.
Companies losing the most on lax project development processes will spearhead the shift, according to Iyengar who said resilient business will augment in-house testing through slow incremental changes, while enterprises stressed by market demands will opt for an outsourced quick-fix.
Businesses must first create a solid benchmarking strategy if they want to re-engineer their software testing strategy. Projects should be measured against a small number of critical metrics throughout the entire development phase, while the few industrial benchmarking controls can be referenced for anecdotal feedback.
"The lack of [industrial] benchmarking controls is a big problem for software testers because there isn't a culture of benchmarking in software development," Iyengar said, adding that benchmarking can also be used to measure the performance of outsourced contracts.
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