How important is software testing in proving financial services?
Seems like a no-brainer, right? I asked this very question when conducting a series of software testing surveys back in 2012/13. At that time, I was working as QA Director for a large multi-national financial product company.
The surveys polled COOs, CIOs, Project Managers, IT Managers and Quality/Test Managers. Survey participants represented insurance, retail banking, commercial banking and capital markets organisations in Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Middle East. These organisations ranged in size from under €20 million to more than €15 billion in annual revenue.
The objective was to determine how much at that point, organisations took testing seriously - if at all and, had they learned anything from the high-profile software failures in the industry in the preceding years.
Large, well established organisations were involved - where you would hope that quality was inherently integral to any planned release or delivery. This, however, was quite a distance from the truth, where results showed that quite often, lip service was being paid to best practice. Testing was continuously squeezed when it came to a declining timeline and/or budget – so quality was under constant threat.
Though there were some promising responses, understandably to a point, most organisations concentrated on getting to market as quickly as possible with their solution and as a result, there was an often an acceptance that the consequences of bad quality could be dealt with later, often after go-live.
To access this opinion paper : SOFTWARE TESTING, LET'S GET BACK TO BASICS - OPINION PAPER