With no surprise, it’s quite evident that software testing takes up the significant part of the software development budget. Despite its unparalleled importance in the software development process, it’s still a big pain for the software development companies.
Did You Know?
Typically, software testing takes upto 25 to 40% of a total IT budget
Undoubtedly, missing out any part in the software testing process to balance out your budget can cause unimaginable consequences. After all, there’s a cost of quality!
So, what’s the solution?
- The solution lies in carrying out the software testing process in the most logical way in the first place. While you hone the software testing process, it not only increases efficiency but helps you cut software testing costs significantly.
- In this blog post, we will walk you through 5 proven and effective ways to reduce your software QA testing cost.
Test in the Early Stages of Development
Minimize Your Use of Manual Testing From the Beginning
Prioritize
Implement a risk-based testing approach
Consider Indirect/Hidden Costs
1. Test in the Early Stages of Development
One of the most effectives ways to reduce software QA testing cost is to catch and fix the software defects in the early stages of development.
The time and resources required to find and fix bugs can be minimized by 4 to 5 times if we compare it to post-release fixes.
If you conduct a test in the unit testing phase, it will be much easier to handle defects. Not only that, it’ll also cost you significantly less time and effort to fix it. Contrary to this, if you find and fix the same bug at integration level, it will be much more costly.
Did You Know?
You can catch much more defects if you test your software at unit testing level as compared to integration level.
2. Minimize Your Use of Manual Testing From the Beginning
Many software development companies have a common practice to begin the testing process with manual testing. The smaller upfront investment is the major reason they begin with manual testing and perform automation in the later stages. But doing this can quickly cause them a lot of problems that become the reason for a low performing software.
Did You Know?
There is a high risk of human error that is associated with the manual testing projects, which tends to increase as you expand your project.
If you’re low on budget, you can prioritize what kind of testing is suitable for what task. For example, you can perform automated regression testing for well-covered functionality and UI areas. This way, you can spare your manual testers for exploratory testing. This strategy can help you to smartly use your limited resources saving more cost and time.
3. Prioritize
It is always necessary to keep things manageable when you have test projects in hand otherwise they become a problem. You have to be clear what is the most important task considering a particular phase of project development.
There are several strategies and techniques you can follow for a more productive project outcome. Let’s have a look at those effective strategies and techniques:
- 80/20 Principle: It is suitable for building suites for automated testing.
- Test Case Prioritization: It can help with running regression testing efficiently.
- Reduce Testing Repository: You can cease the maintenance of redundant tests which are of less importance or priority.
4. Implement a risk-based testing approach
A risk-based testing approach helps you to filter out tests based on their expected risk. You can perform tests only on those risks that you think may appear with a tested project.
Check out how to test software by implementing a risk-based testing approach.
Filter Out Risks and Create a List
- The first step is to identify and prioritize risk that Quality Assurance (QA) engineers consider problematic to the software.
- You can effectively plan the software testing process that saves your time by analyzing critical potential issues in a product.
- Prioritizing risk must be done at the beginning of SDLC as it simplifies preparation and planning for software testing.
Explore the Most Harmful Risks
- Risk-based testing is an efficient way to filter out and focus on the risks with the greatest impact on software. QA engineers must look out for testing functionalities with the highest chances of failure.
- In this step, you can find the most harmful issues like security gaps, information disclosure, and performance related problems.
Transform Your Testing Strategy
- Once you successfully eliminate the known risk for the first time, repeat the entire cycle for several times. It will help you to assign testing priorities and find the most of the issues.
5. Consider Indirect/Hidden Costs
One way to reduce your software testing and QA testing costs is to efficiently plan its budget in the first place.
Many people emphasize reducing testing costs, but they lack in planning a budget efficiently that makes a huge difference. Commonly, they overlook indirect or hidden expenses that may appear later in the software testing process.
Let’s have a look at indirect or hidden expenses in the software testing process:
Expenses on Learning
- In case of unique test functionalities depending on your specific software product, testing engineers need time to learn. Also, they need to work on learning and mastering new testing tools to thoroughly check your specific software product.
- The time QA teams require to get acquainted with the test functionalities and learn specific testing tools entails hidden cost.
Expenses on Infrastructure
- Infrastructure expenses are mainly associated with the testing tools you need for your software testing project.
- There are some additional costs linked with your licensed and open-source automation tools such as databases, servers, or cloud services.
Expenses on Maintenance
- As your testing tools update over time with new features and technologies, they tend to conflict with the existing code. As a result, QA engineers need to update the existing code which requires time.
- The time they spend on reworking the code is also an additional cost that we overlook sometimes.
Final Words: How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing?
In this blog post, we looked into the 5 most effective ways to reduce software testing cost without compromising quality. As most of these suggestions are about making software testing processes better, it’s extremely important to have a skilled team that can effectively execute these processes.
And as always, we appreciate your comments. If you’ve anything to share about the software QA testing cost and how to reduce it, write in the comments section below.
