|
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Survey Finds 70 Per Cent of Organisations Fail to Quantify the Risk
of Application Failure Before Implementing New Systems
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Poorly Performing Applications Cost 72 Per cent of Businesses up to £500,000 Every Year
London, 21st June 2004 -- Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ: CPWR) have today announced the results of a survey which revealed that 70 per cent of organisations do not numerically quantify the risk of failure when going live with a new application. With such a high number of organisations lacking the ability to quantify, and therefore mitigate risk, as well as gauge software quality, it is concerning that 72 per cent of respondents stated that the cost of poor software quality to the business was between £100,000 and £500,000 per year. Independent research company Vanson Bourne conducted the research that revealed these results, with 100 IT directors in large UK enterprises interviewed.
"These findings are worrying," comments Sarah Saltzman, Technology Support Manager for Quality, at Compuware. "Risk should be measured and monitored throughout the development of an application, so that organisations can make go-live decisions based on the amount of risk they are prepared to take. Companies should be ensuring that the most business critical parts of an application have been rigorously tested to ensure a low risk of failure. Take an e-commerce application for example; surely it would be unwise to go-live without knowing what the risk of failure is within the Web bookings module? Unless companies move towards assessing risk and focusing testing effort in line with these assessments then the cost of poor quality applications to the business will only increase."
Almost half (47 per cent) of the IT Directors questioned said that when testing an application, business sponsors provided them with no clear guidance about which parts of the application were critical to the business. The result is that testing teams cannot develop a strategy aimed at testing the higher risk elements of the application. This was reflected in the findings, with 66 per cent stating that they take a blanket approach to testing new applications. A further 61 per cent said that the approach they took to testing new applications was to try and test as much of the application as possible in an attempt to get 100 per cent reliability.
"It is unrealistic to think that you can test the whole application and eliminate every element of risk. Time pressures and budgets mean that testing the whole application is impractical and therefore businesses need to focus on decreasing risk to an acceptable level, rather than striving for the impossible," continued Saltzman. "What organisations need to do is prioritise their testing efforts by thoroughly testing the parts of the application that hold the biggest risk. Adopting this risk-based approach enables testing teams to identify the less critical parts of the application where defects will be more acceptable, rather than taking a blanket approach and saying that a certain amount of defects can be tolerated without knowing which part of the application, and more importantly what business process, they might affect."
Risk-based testing enables the IT department to accurately asses the risk of an application failing and the impact such failure would have on the business. This assessment can then be fed back to senior management, enabling them to assess whether or not an application should go live at a specified time and make an informed decision on the information that the testing team has presented to them.
"IT teams can often get the blame for poor software quality. However,
poor quality often stems from pressure to go live with an application
from the business. A key advantage of the risk-based testing approach
is that it eliminates blame, ensuring that both senior management and
IT share the responsibility for the success or failure of a new application,
rather than the business sponsors getting all the glory and the IT department
getting all the blame," concluded Saltzman.
Compuware Corporation
Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ: CPWR) is a world leader in delivering software and services that enable businesses to manage their enterprises and maximise the value of their IT assets. Compuware solutions accelerate the development, improve the quality and enhance the performance of business-driving applications. Founded in 1973, Compuware serves the world's leading IT organisations, including more than 90 per cent of the Fortune 100 companies.
For more information please contacthttp://www.compuware.co.uk
Compuware is a registered trademark of Compuware Corporation. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Compuware is a member of The Prince's Trust Technology Leadership Group (TLG), a premier industry-networking forum for leaders within the IT industry, established in May 2002.
For press enquiries contact:
Kewal Varia/Sophie Jarvis
Spark Communications
020 7357 8612
sophie@sparkcomms.co.uk
kewal@sparkcomms.co.uk
