Remember when Apple's iPhone alarm failed to go off leaving people late for work? Or maybe you've been overcharged at the supermarket as the result of a till error or couldn't get access to your online bank account.
This is often down to software glitches or bugs. We've provided PR services for software testing companies since 2008 and understand that there are a number of reasons that bugs can be introduced into a software or applications - the main ones being inadequate and ever changing requirements, increasing software complexity, errors made by developers when programming and tight project deadlines.
In terms of complexity, Gartner has coined a phrase - The Nexus of Forces - which describes the convergence of social media, mobile, cloud and big data. These are a whole host of new technologies offering organisations the opportunity to get closer to customers and keep them happy.
Two examples of complexity and the growing importance of software quality are mobile and the Internet of Things.
As we start to use mobiles for more activity including using our devices for payments, ensuring quality becomes important as consumers can be fickle and poor experience leads not only to poor reputation but also lost customers. Testing payments apps on different devices and also for security is just one activity that ensures quality for consumers.
With 50 million connected devices predicted over the next decade, quality includes testing for security, interoperability and communication.
These new technologies are introducing change at an unprecedented rate that many organisations are unable to cope with. Old systems, fear of change and lack of communication between stakeholders are preventing some organisations from taking advantage of new technologies. And this is when agile companies are threatening to take market share.
So what should organisations do? Conduct a quality health check, develop a software quality strategy, build software quality early in a project, get developers and testers to work closer together - in an agile way - and switch to test automation for any large scale repetitive tests. Of course, each organisation is different, so turning to a specialist software quality consultancy is probably the ideal first move.
