Economics
A study conducted by NIST in 2002 reports that software bugs cost the U.S. economy $59.5 billion annually. More than a third of this cost could be avoided if better software testing was performed.
It is commonly believed that the earlier a defect is found, the cheaper it is to fix it. The following table shows the cost of fixing the defect depending on the stage it was found. For example, if a problem in the requirements is found only post-release, then it would cost 10–100 times more to fix than if it had already been found by the requirements review. With the advent of modern continuous deployment practices and cloud-based services, the cost of re-deployment and maintenance may lessen over time.
| Cost to fix a defect | Time detected | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Requirements | Architecture | Construction | System test | Post-release | ||
| Time introduced | Requirements | 1× | 3× | 5–10× | 10× | 10–100× |
| Architecture | - | 1× | 10× | 15× | 25–100× | |
| Construction | - | - | 1× | 10× | 10–25× | |
Read more about this topic: Software Testing
Famous quotes containing the word economics:
“Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“I am not prepared to accept the economics of a housewife.”
—Jacques Chirac (b. 1932)
“Women’s battle for financial equality has barely been joined, much less won. Society still traditionally assigns to woman the role of money-handler rather than money-maker, and our assigned specialty is far more likely to be home economics than financial economics.”
—Paula Nelson (b. 1945)