Thursday, November 15, 2012

So - you don't need software testing?!

As promised, I'm feeling inspired to write another post - I'm getting a bit of a bug here - quite appropriate for a software tester!

This one is a bit of a list really of software 'disasters' - just in case you don't think you need software testers - if you do need software testing - be sure to check out my software testing company in Devon, UK!

These are in no particular order, but first up is Tesco in the UK.  They apparently didn't do sufficient cross browser testing and ie9 didn't work properly for their banking customers for a whole week!  Customers were left unable to access their accounts.  The story is here: http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3287667/tesco-bank-issues-customers-with-emergency-guidance/?olo=BusinessUpdate&cmpid=BU1New5&no1x1

Another UK bank also had issues recently.  This time it was Nat West who didn't know how much money was in peoples' accounts after an 'upgrade'.  Commentators here put this down to insufficient testing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/25/how-natwest-it-meltdown

A famous bug caused the Ariane 5 rocket to explode - the rocket cost £7 billion to produce.  The bug is described in this link - basically, they tried to fit a 64-bit number into a 16-bit space: http://www.around.com/ariane.html

Software plays an increasing role in our lives - in cars and aeroplanes for example which more than ever are 'fly-by-wire'.  For example, Toyota recently had to recall 400,000 cars due to a software glitch which caused problems with their braking: http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2012-08-03/the-big-cost-of-software-bugs.html#slide9

Another famous and very serious software problem in the medical field was the Therac-25 radiation machine which led to overdoses - more can be read about that one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

OK - some of these are very serious indeed and not all software bugs will have such serious consequences.  However, if you are a software development company, or have a public facing web site for your business, or even develop software for in-house use in your corporate organisation, can you afford to ignore the need for software testing?

I'd love to hear of your examples and comments - please post them below - and I'll add them to the list!

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