Osterman Research and software production management vendor Electric Cloud released a survey this month that laid most of the blame for major software bugs on poor testing procedures and infrastructure limitations as opposed to design problems.
The survey included responses from 144 professionals including software developers, testers, managers and executives from organizations with at least 1,000 employees and 50 developers across a variety of industries. Of those surveyed, 58 percent said their last major bug was due to testing procedures and issues of infrastructure.
Almost 10 percent reported all their testing was done manually. Just 12 percent of software development organizations reported using fully automated test systems. Forty-six percent of software developers said they do not have time to test as much as they should, and 53 percent reported their testing is limited by compute resources.
Thirty-six percent also said they do not believe their companies perform enough prerelease testing.
The cost of having buggy software is evident from the survey. In addition to 56 percent stating that bugs discovered late in development almost always affected release dates, 44 percent estimated their last significant software bug cost an average of $250,000 in lost revenue and 20 developer-hours to correct.
“As the software we rely on each day continues to grow in complexity, it becomes more and more essential that bugs are caught and repaired quickly,” said Michael Osterman, CEO of Osterman Research, in a statement. “With 88 percent of the companies represented in this survey still using manual testing to some extent and respondents rating dealing with their test systems as more painful than dealing with taxes, it’s clear that software developers still have a long way to go toward full automation and effective test systems.”