Every project activity has cost and it must yield excellent business value and software testing is no exception. Test Managers should optimize testing in a way that its business value is maximized. Too much of testing would cause unnecessary delays and end up incurring more costs.

Too little software testing will cause highly defective products to handed to the end users. A middle path must be chosen by Test Manager / QA Manager and explain it to the stakeholders too.

Testing is considered valuable by organizations but Test Managers find it difficult to explain the value in easily understandable and quantifiable terms. They concentrate on technical details and overlook the strategic details in testing, which are considered more important by the managers.

Cost of quality

Cost of quality is one of the most established, effective measures of quantifying and calculating the business value of testing. To measure this, the project and its budgeted expenses must be classified into these four categories:

• Prevention costs – This includes cost of training developers on writing secure and easily maintainable code
• Detection costs – This includes cost of creating test cases, setting up testing environments, revisiting testing requirements.
• Internal failure costs – This includes costs incurred in fixing defects just before delivery
• External failure costs – This includes product support costs incurred by delivering poor quality software

Normally, cost of detecting defects is the major part of total cost. This is the cost which is incurred even if no defects are found by the testing team. Whereas remainder cost is incurred on fixing the defects, i.e. internal failure cost.

However, total of these two costs is always significantly less than external failure costs. So, testing always provides good business value.

Test Managers should be able to create a strong case for taking up testing activities by evaluating these four categories of costs.

Business value of software testing

It is the responsibility of Test Manager to identify the business value that needs to be provided and communicate it to other teams and senior management. Ensuring that the senior management is aware of the business value of testings help alleviate any concerns regarding the cost of quality.

These are some of the measurable ways in which testing can deliver business value:

• Detecting defects that can be corrected before product release
• Documenting defects that cannot be fixed, with details on how to handle them
• Providing status reports and test metrics on project progress, process implementation and product development

These are some of the subjective ways in which testing can deliver business value:

• Enhancing reputation for product and process quality
• Ensuring predictable product releases in an organized manner
• Increasing confidence in product quality
• Decreasing risks to product or team members using risk based testing, other techniques or simply by testing the functionality
• Hedging against legal liabilities
• In mission critical projects – testing can prevent mission failure and may even save lives

All the measures listed here need not be applicable for all organizations or projects.

The next topic will help you recognize the difference between distributed, outsourced and insourced testing.

Other popular articles:

• What is test estimation? Related Factors, Estimation Techniques
• Who are the stakeholders in software testing? How to identify them?
• What is Testing Tool ROI? One time/Recurring Costs & Risks related to tools?
• What is Defect or bugs or faults in software testing?
• How to communicate effectively as a Test / QA Manager?