If you had asked the Mike Brown from ten minutes ago, “Which apps do you think have more bugs: public sector or private sector?” he would have said public, by a wide margin. But in the ten minutes since then, he came across this article on net-security.org that completely proved himself wrong. He will stop referring to himself in the third person, starting…now.
Anyway, if the data is to be believed, private sector apps actually have more bugs than their public sector cousins – and it’s not even close. The article is packed with tons of great stats, but here were my favorites:
A new study identified private sector businesses in the banking, retail and mobile sectors, more likely to suffer software malfunctions than public sector organizations. The SQS team analyzed two years’ worth of news reports about software and computer failures, covering 964 stories and 245 UK-based organizations. While the level of public sector computer-glitch reporting remained constant during 2011 and 2012, reports on private sector computer problems have tripled.
The retail sector was the most error-prone in 2011, with 21 per cent of all stories, while mobile followed at 10 per cent and banking and local government at 6 per cent each. In 2012, reports of banking sector computer failures rocketed to 61 per cent of all stories, followed by retail at 7 per cent, mobile and education at 4 per cent, while local government claimed 2 per cent of glitch stories.
Of course, that is the “what” but not the “why.” For that we turn to Stephen Fice, MD of SQS UK, who explained:
“Software is increasingly more complex at a time when private sector firms are under pressure to attract new customers through innovation, and offer a high level of service to retain existing customers. Private sector companies are adopting new technologies at an unprecedented pace, and price-sensitive consumers expect high standards or will search out an alternative supplier. In comparison, public sector IT budgets have been cut or remain static, so new IT systems are less likely to be adopted and consequently fewer glitches are reported. Also, the public sector is more likely to adopt tried and tested technologies, which are less risky.”
And what’s to be done about this? Here is their remedy, followed by ours:
All IT projects should have quality and testing built in from day one to reduce the likelihood of errors. No longer does a testing expert have to scroll through lines of endless code, instead testing is being automated and virtualized.
We couldn’t agree more. But while automated testing and virtualization are part of the solution, in-the-wild testing also has a major role to play. Take for example the two worst culprits for bugs: banking and retail. These are apps that are intended to be used under a wide variety of conditions; fringe use cases that automation rarely (if ever) accounts for. For these apps, the serious issues are far more likely to surface when testing is done by real users, on real devices, operating under true real-world conditions.
So if you’re a tester on the lookout for bugs, you would be wise to focus on the private sector. And if you’re a private sector app developer, you would be wise to focus on in-the-wild testing before, during and after all your major launches. Want to learn more?