Agile Test Management For Saving Cost And Reduction In Testing Time

These days, high software testing costs are one of the biggest concerns in agile projects. Software testing can take as much as 25% of the entire project costs, whereas, in some instances, it may even go beyond. Fortunately, there are a number of methods that project managers can practice nowadays to reduce testing costs before they balloon out of proportion & begin risking the complete project.

Optimize The Testing Process

Even though a big number of CTOs realize the significance of software quality, many fail to make testing their priority. In fact, a study from Cambridge University’s Judge Business School from 2016 found that businesses spent up to $312 billion on bug fixes last year. Well, this might be simply avoided with effective and right testing, while debugging ‘live’ software can cost as much as 4 or 5 times more than debugging at the design phase, as per Celerity’s The True Cost of a Software Bug.

But testing can too lead to increased prices if it is not optimized appropriately, or if a wrong feature is integrated. Here are a few ways through which testing can be optimized to save costs:

• Test at an initial phase: The longer a software bug remains undetected, the more costly it will be to fix it. By testing initially in the project, there are more chances to find “red flags” and solve them.
• Use operative testing models: There are so many testing models accessible today, although not all are the same in nature. For instance, as we know, test replication is at risk, choosing an effective test operation is going the decrease the risk and the time, which would be required to test the software. In fact, in a case, if there’s a limited time to carry out testing in agile projects, you may consider proceeding with rapid testing methods. It’s a great means to walk through the different parts of the software and ensure they are functioning well; without any disruption.

1. Automate testing

You may get many benefits through this. All leading automated testing companies recommend integrating the test automation approach because it is quicker and consistent than other methods, having lesser risks of errors and lesser costs.

2. Testing tools

Many testing tools these days seem good on paper, but in real life, they are very much difficult to integrate and are very costly. Incorporating such tools along with the other ones, at lesser prices is another great way to optimize the testing process and lessen its complete project cost.

Reducing the Time and Cost In Software Testing Process

Although much consideration is usually given to the cost of software development, and much enthusiasm is generated from technologies that provide productivity improvement to the professionals, the cost & productivity of software testing are frequently overlooked or just recognized as “that is what it charges and how long it requires.” Well, this is sarcastic in that the cost & time of software testing are frequently comparable to the time & cost of making software for a business.

Recently, Beizer stated that “half the labor expended to make a program is usually spent on testing processes.”

Whereas, on the other hand, IDT conducted its survey about software testing, in which, they described it in detail in the book named up “Implementing Automated Software Testing,” which incorporated more than 700 responses. One of the questions we requested was what % of the complete program schedule was disbursed on testing. 46% of the responses showed that 30% to 50% was spent on testing, while the other 19% of the responses showed that 50% to 75% was used in testing processes.

The overall cost and time associated with software testing show a major portion of a project’s cost and plan, and thus improvements made to upturn testing productivity and lessen labor hours can have an assessable impact. The major considerations in measuring the impact are:

• What are the important areas and till what the test program can be automated by a professional?
• What is going to be the reduction in complete schedule and test time span?
• How much there will be the increase in the testing and how quality is going to improve?
• To know what are the mitigation factors in the process?

Follow An Intelligent Testing Plan & Save More Than Just Time and Energy

1. Scale-up automation process rapidly

The model-based test automation process makes businesses quickly scale test automation rates to around 90%+ through 160+ technologies. In this, no coding skills are needed. You may quickly make resilient tests that can be simply reused and preserved.

2. Release quickly

Tricent is Tosca’s risk-based testing approach quickly that discovers the main-risk areas in software under test processes so you can concentrate more on testing efforts, and be able to discover critical bugs earlier, and then release the software faster and with more assurance.

Top Ways to Reduce the Time and Save the Cost of Software Testing

• To make the most out of the process, you need to test with developers side by side. This way, you can ensure that requirements are being testing as the software is developing thereby limiting errors at the end. Here, show-stoppers are specifically not the bad code, but it is the code that is not working in the way in which it is supposed to.
• You must start performance and security testing from the very beginning, rather than till the end to find some problem. Remember, big problems will usually cost you more at the end. This is true, particularly in security and performance concern, if the code is not coded well. However, by giving it the right amount of consideration, you can easily spot it in the beginning. So, it is better to spend time earlier rather than stucking on it later.
• Know “stable” & “well-tested” areas of the software and then minimize testing in those areas. You can implement regression in certain areas so that you can run it effectively.
• Analyze different test cases and test scripts (automated) and eliminate redundancy and tests that don’t discover bugs. Try reducing the test case repository to as little as possible.
• Try reducing rigid scripted testing approaches and then replace them with tentative testing methods which would help you find more bugs quickly.
• Carry out the testing process in small and regular cycles in a specific product area and function.
• It would help if you reduced test plans & long testing. This is to bare-bones reporting where the action will be taken based on the outcomes. In a case, if there is no certain resulting action, then the reports are going to be of no use.
• Practice a quick defect triages to decrease the bug management cycle time as a whole.
• Classify and carry out testing wisely so you can pull precisely what you want for the testing task.
• Consider reducing your test platform matrix by 80/20 rule. Try working with product management to know the impact of platforms demanding support.

Well, saving the cost and reducing the time of software testing process goes a long way into the business. Testing is, after all, an important element of quality, and through this, we can give our financial resources what they want.

Wrapping It Up

If you want your business to be competitive in this digitized era and attain a winning position in the IT industry, you have to release very high-quality products in the market. Enlightening the quality of software products will have the greatest impact on your firm and its overall financial performance. So, when managing your work processes, don’t work on saving on testing, as the cost of mistakes later on may prove to be very high. Consequently, the software quality strategy of your business should cover all fundamental aspects – a test-oriented quality management approach, effective planning, and a professional QA team.