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Is the mystery Borland suitor Serena?
Borland software is considering an offer from another company after a preliminary deal with MicroFocus. Is Serena the new company?
06/30/2009 01:55 PM EST

Windows 7 - An eBayer's dream product?
Windows 7 pre-orders can make people money on eBay.
06/29/2009 03:48 PM EST

Know thine cloud provider
Cloud computing require companies to understand compliance and regulation. Third parties will play a big role in regulated industries.
06/29/2009 02:58 PM EST

 

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Software Is Deployed, Bugs and All


By Edward J. Correia
July 29, 2008 — 
More than 40 percent of all software applications are released with between one and 10 critical defects. And managers are fully aware. Three-quarters of deployed apps have between one and 10 critical errors, and again, bosses know about it. Hard to believe? It was for me, but that was the finding of a survey published in June by IDC.

The research firm polled 139 companies in North America, with workforces ranging from 250 to 10,000 or more employees. Fully 62 percent of respondents were managers or directors in IT management, IT operations, or software development, and were judged by the researchers to be “engaged enough with quality issues to answer in-depth questions about testing, defects and code analysis."

I’ll begin with this paradoxical tidbit: While 72 percent of respondents described their debugging process as “problematic,” 62 percent said that their defect management and testing approach either “did not require improvement” or that it wasn’t possible to create change in their approaches (despite problems).

“Education is needed across organizations,” was the conclusion of Melinda-Carol Ballou, who authored “Improving Software Quality to Drive Business Agility,” a white paper based on the study.

Disclosure: This white paper was sponsored by Coverity, which makes source code analysis tools. But despite the obvious commercial motive behind its commission, I believe some of the white paper’s conclusions have value and may help some of you improve your focus on quality. Data in the paper are based on IDC’s Software Quality Survey, 2008.

“Even as organizations understand greater complexity levels and acknowledge significant labor to repair software problems, they underestimate current and ongoing costs for defect repair and business impact,” wrote Ballou in an opinion summarizing the paper. “This level of optimism can mask the need to evaluate and rework existing quality approaches.”

And indeed, the data show exactly that. When asked how many critical bugs were found in the 12 months following software release into production, more people said they didn’t know (about 3 percent) than said zero (about 2 percent). Even more concerning is that the same number of people that said they didn’t know how many bugs their software had when release indicated that their apps contained more than 500 known critical defects. I’m not sure which is worse.

When asked how many found serious defects post-code review, 25.5 percent said “very often” or “all the time,” and 41 percent said they had issues with defects found after review.

“IDC’s conclusion is that current, typical quality approaches are woefully inadequate to address code defect costs and issues,” Ballou said. “This means that they find problems after QA and spend significant amounts of effort and time to repair defects."

How much time? When asked how many workdays are required by the average developer to repair field defects, only 16 percent responded one day or less. Another 66 percent said it took as many as 10 days, including 45 percent that said “two to five days.” About 8 percent indicated 20 to 30 workdays. Obviously, that’s far too many.

Among the report’s takeaways were:
The challenges of increased complexity and high-end development increase code problems and costs, and drive debilitating consequences resulting from defects pre- and post-deployment.

Organizations should evaluate automated tools to supplement manual review along with appropriate process and organization approaches.
Survey respondents estimated that if 100 percent of defects were addressed and remediated prior to production, they would experience a 32 percent cost savings, according to the report.


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