In today’s world, technology is a part of our daily lives, existing in many activities and things we interact with. Technological progress cannot be stopped, and particularly software, an intangible thing that we can’t see but interact with daily, is becoming a crucial part of this globalized world.
Software can be found in various fields and sectors, such as finance (electronic transactions), the stock exchange, the health sector (calculating drug doses through software applications), and others. There is no doubt that the use of the software is a vital part of our lives, as most modern tools are governed by software.
The existence of software makes many players in these sectors competitive and globalized, but at the same time, it forces them to have a high level of responsibility in using these tools, which are used to generate value in our daily work as a society.
Now, in the corporate realm, having the correct software is vital to being competitive. With increasing demand, the requirement to be at the forefront forces every developer to supply better software.
With the improvement of software quality, the quality of life of people who use it will also increase.
When choosing software, organizations and IT managers have a responsibility to understand that quality is a priority, not an option, and that it has a high impact and consequences. The function of the software is determined by its quality. If the software has quality, the functions it supports will have a high quality in accordance with what is expected.
What is quality in software? This is a broad term that covers various phases of creating software. There are several definitions, but on this occasion, we will discuss only two of them.
There is more than one definition, which allows us to conclude that it is something important given the context of the use of software in organizations and activities of daily human life. It’s important to mention that to obtain quality software, every developer must use methods or practices, procedures, and good standards throughout its construction. This includes increasing the level of productivity in its development and maintaining internal control. Every actor involved must understand the importance of quality in software so that it can function properly.
Various organizations within the software, finance, telecommunications, and media-producing sectors have recognized the importance of quality and acknowledged that its absence is a high risk, and they need to invest a large portion of their budget in improving the quality of the software used, including investing in custom e-learning development.
Let’s remember events such as the millennium change that gave rise to Millennium Error or Y2K, an error that led to many failures around the world in numerous systems with consequences. Or a well-known and documented example with the launch of the first Arianne 5 rocket by the EU Space Agency in 1996. This rocket, which took ten years and seven thousand million euros to develop, exploded due to a defect in the control package before one minute of flight had passed.
This failure affects all countries and economic sectors, and the worst part is that the costs of poor quality are not recorded in the account. Therefore, when the project is being implemented, it’s easy to reduce the budget or cut it for the quality process. But in the end, they will end up with software failure in a productive environment, with very high consequences for the community and the organization itself.
And the impact far exceeds the cost of the solution. The cost of external errors is much higher and with unfavorable consequences for the organization, such as loss of market, business, clients, lawsuits, complaints, returns, guarantees, and a variety of consequences.
Many people have experienced the consequences of poor quality software, such as in bank transactions, ticket purchases, and other systems, where system lags and long response times lead to loss of time and money. However, the impact can be even more serious if system failure causes economic, environmental, social, or human loss.
Many factors can contribute to this issue, such as a lack of procedures, failure to apply standards, inadequate methodology, insufficient prevention activities, and inadequate training of managers and actors involved in the development process. By minimizing these factors, software bugs can be prevented.
Several organizations are dedicated to developing standards and good practices for evaluating the software development process, such as CMM, CMMI, SPICE 1, ISO, IEEE, and others.
Throughout the value chain, quality must be assessed by applying good practices in the development process, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. This can enable debugging at each iteration or phase, reduce the risk of negative events in the software, and facilitate internal control activities.