Why Your Project Has To Be Tested

JetRuby clients often ask: “Why do I need to have my product tested? Isn’t it possible to create a website, application or a program without any errors or bugs?”
Even the most experienced and well-paid developers will not give a positive answer to this question. There is a number of reasons why it is so:

1. Emergence of errors and defects is a natural part of development process. When some new functionality is added it is not always obvious how new features can influence existing ones.
2. Someone develops, someone hacks. For some reason they think that when developer implements a new feature, it’s he who has to check whether everything works flawless and up to client’s expectations. But here is the thing to understand — developer’s job is only to create code or fix it if broken. It is unnatural for him to criticize his own creation like a painter wouldn’t criticize his own piece of art. Hopefully, you can entrust QA with this task. His job is to thoroughly search for security gaps and vulnerable points in the system. QA ensures they won’t occur in the final product.
3. A lot of money and a lot of time. It’s commonly known that in order to cope with big volumes of work in a short period of time, you need to delegate tasks. While QA carries out software testing, developer can spend this time on creating new features.

In addition, we use different methods of software testing where a developer is directly involved in this process. One of such specific methods of creating Ruby on Rails applications is development through testing. This approach is fundamentally different from the traditional methods of development in which testing phase goes after code writing. In development through testing, test cases (test options) are written by developers at the initial stage of product creation. Only after that, the client’s ideas are implemented according to the requirements. The developer’s objective is to write code so that it passed test cases. Such approach allows us to focus on finding solutions and write minimal amount of code. This saves time and money for our developers and clients respectively. However, the final stage of the development cycle still includes automation or manual testing.

Even though testing and quality assurance (QA) are associated with additional costs for some customers, security and performance testing guarantees the timely elimination of potential problems. This is really crucial because time, efforts and budget needed for elimination of revealed errors depend directly on when they were found. Elimination of defects at the early stage of designing or development is a lot cheaper than when the product is already used by customers. Furthermore, there are some problems which can not be resolved at any price, e.g. loss of credit and damage to company’s reputation. In the today’s world of intense competition, that is an impermissible luxury.

Of course, if you want to create a small website, you probably don’t need a team of QA engineers to ensure the quality of the product. But when it comes to the development of online shops, SaaS systems, mobile and web applications, where there is no room for mistakes involving a QA team is a must.