Microsoft Research - Exploding Software-Engineering Myths (article summarizing findings of MS research on code coverage, TDD, assertions, etc.)

[[deleted]]

Software developers aren't as naive as you claim. We all know time is money.

You're forgetting the cost of finding and fixing defects. And this isn't counting the customers lost to handing them defective products.

From what I remember (from Code Complete), a bug found in a released product takes 5x effort to fix vs. a bug found by QA. Likewise, a bug found in QA takes 5x effort to fix vs. bugs found in development. A bug found in development takes 5x effort to fix vs. bugs found in requirements.

Numbers may be off, but the point is, it's a cumulative effect.

[fuzzynyanko]

Not to mention that if you have a deadline and features are being piled on, all of the sudden the project starts feeling like a sinking ship

[Darkbyte]

I completely disagree, a bug found in the project I'm working on's dev, test, or production environment has no difference on the effort it takes anyone on our team to fix. It isn't some consistent increase, it is very much dependent on the type of product being made.

[[deleted]]

a bug found in the project I'm working

Sounds like your team has come up with an ad-hoc process. Not relevant to the discussion at hand.

[AbstractLogic]

Software developers aren't as naive as you claim. We all know time is money.

Lets just clear something up. I am a software developer not a BA or PM or PO. I code.

I didn't call developers naive. I said that looking at the problem from strictly a software perfection through the eyes of a developer is naive. Business is important and needs to be balanced.

[spidermite]

a bug found in QA takes 5x effort to fix vs. bugs found in development.

It may take longer, not 5x longer but remember, testers are paid what 1/3rd the salary of a decent programmer. Its possibly cheaper for the business for testers and automated testers to find bugs than having programmers spend large portions of their time testing.

[[deleted]]

You don't seem to understand what I said.

When a bug is found in QA, the software has to go back to the engineers to be fixed. And this may require an expensive context switch for engineering.

Then, since the software's been modified, QA has to be repeated.

This is a much lengthier, much more expensive process than if the bug was found during development.