Recently, I’ve stumbled upon an article by Joe McKendrick (an information technology analyst) at ZDNet.com dwelling on “big software glitches” and their consequences we observe today. There were mentioned the latest Toyota’s troubles, the failed attempt of TD Bank to integrate two IT systems after a merge, and more. Joe also pointed out that QA tools or security middleware can help.
The sad picture shown made me again convinced that IT best practices may be get ignored even by big enterprises. In fact, large enterprises, mid-sized and small software companies are pressed today to “do more with less”. Unfortunately, this “less” sometimes means not using quality assurance best practices, which results in software failure at the wrong time. And the consequences of those failures may range from just unpleasant to horrible. With big enterprises the situation is even worse, as we speak about huge amount of information they deal with, or loads of customers using their products, etc.
The solution, however, is really simple. Implementation and use of quality assurance best practices, including unit testing, stress testing, re-testing after fixes or modifications, and test automation, which provides more accurate testing in a shorter period of time. Good management, focused on utilization of IT best practices, may help avoid the occurrence of software failures like described above, and ensure software stability in the longer term.
