Why is Pre-rollout Software Testing Important?

This post is part of our Custom Software Development series

If you’re like most clients, you’re excited to get your custom software into production. When your software development team tells you that the software is ready for your review and approval, it’s natural to want to get it into the hands of your employees as quickly as possible.

But don’t skip testing your software!

No matter how good your software development team is, pre-rollout software testing procedures protect your business. Just like pilots run through a pre-flight checklist, software testing should be a given.

Going live with untested software is risky for several reasons:

1. Untested software can have bugs that only show up in a production environment, which can lead to downtime, errors, or other disruptions.
2. Untested software may have security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers, compromising the security of your application and the data it handles. This can result in data breaches, loss of sensitive information, and other security incidents that could harm your business and your users.
3. Users can get quickly frustrated with errors and workarounds, losing trust in the software and damaging your ability to get widespread user adoption.

The importance of end-user testing

Software developers usually catch the critical bugs before the software is sent to your team for review. What you really need to worry about are the little “gotchas,” the exceptions and scenarios that the software development team won’t find without getting real-world users to test the software.

These hidden “gotchas” can create problems that cut into profits. For example:

• Not adding sales tax, but still owing the tax to your state and federal tax agencies.
• Not updating a customer address properly, causing mis-shipments or miscalculations of shipping fees.
• Not validating fields, which then allows erroneous data to be stored. Dates, address fields, and numeric measurements often need to be standardized. For example, a carpet installer may want to capture room dimensions. Is the field capturing feet, inches, or centimeters?
• Not building in all the edge cases and exceptions, resulting in costly or embarrassing pricing errors.
• Not testing user permissions levels, which could result in an employee accidentally deleting important information, like all pending orders, or having access to confidential information.
• Not testing calculations, like inventory counts that aren’t updating properly, which cause you to oversell out-of-stock items or overbuy raw materials.

Overall, going live without doing software testing first is a risky and potentially costly decision. As the client, having your team involved in the testing process is critical to the success of your project. Pre-go-live user testing protects your business and alleviates a lot of headaches.

Using Eclipse Consulting for your next software development project

Our software developers have experience in multiple development frameworks, including Django and Python, as go-to solutions. We’re happy to share examples of projects we’ve completed for different clients.

Clients choose to work with us because we set you up for long-term success. Upfront we ask a lot of questions and think through scenarios that many others miss. Then we build out a realistic project plan that includes time for testing and documentation. We clearly communicate expectations and timelines and provide support after project delivery.

Looking for the right business software?

As a technology advisor for growing businesses, we help clients consider all the options, whether that’s a packaged business application or developing custom software. The next step would be to schedule a free “Explore the Possibilities” call with us.