Poor software testing risks software outages
Two-thirds of organizations globally are at risk of a software outage over the next year – and the UK’s doing worse than most.
Companies are centered on productivity, with 45% focused on improving delivery speed and only 13% on enhancing software quality. More than six-in-ten are shipping code without having fully tested it. And as a result, testing firm Tricentis concludes in a new report, 66% of global organizations are at significant risk of software outages in the next year.
More than four-in-ten believe that poor software quality is costing them at least $1 million every year, with financial services firms reporting the steepest losses. Nearly half the technology leaders and professionals surveyed said they felt pressure to shorten release cycles. Four-in-ten said accidental deployments of untested code were driving widespread quality compromises, with poor software quality increasing technical debt, maintenance costs, customer turnover, security breaches, and compliance.
“Recent software outages due to unchecked or untested code changes showcase just how critical high-quality software is to the wider organizational ecosystem, and having the right balance of quality and speed to serve developing technological needs is paramount,” said Kevin Thompson, Tricentis CEO.
“As AI continues to evolve, we believe tech leaders and practitioners need to define what quality means for their organization to strike the right balance between quality, speed, and cost while implementing comprehensive testing strategies to deliver better business outcomes.”
The UK is particularly remiss, with 73% admitting to pushing untested code live – 12% more than their US counterparts – and 44% reporting untested code accidentally slipping through. More than seven-in-ten said they still delay software releases because of a lack of confidence in test coverage.
“With outage risks in the UK now higher than the global average due to the pressure to deliver software faster than ever, it’s critical that teams tighten their engineering processes,” commented Tricentis head of UKI, Andrew Power.
“Agentic AI offers a real opportunity here to plug productivity gaps and raise the bar on software quality and performance. By adopting autonomous testing and AI-driven delivery tools, organizations can meet tight deadlines without compromising reliability.”
Part of the problem, the report found, is a misalignment between developers and leadership, complained about by a third. In the UK, though, the biggest challenge is the pressure to release software too quickly, cited by more than three-in-ten.
Many of the survey respondents are pinning their hopes on agentic AI, with more than eight-in-ten saying they were excited about the technology’s potential to take over the more monotonous tasks in the development and delivery cycle. More broadly, 84% believe AI will help software development teams deliver software under increasingly tight deadlines.
“Agentic AI offers a real opportunity here to plug productivity gaps and raise the bar on software quality and performance,” said Power. “By adopting autonomous testing and AI-driven delivery tools, organizations can meet tight deadlines without compromising reliability.”
However, there’s a word for warning in the form of a report late last year from Rainforest, which found that AI tools weren’t actually helping developers save time on software testing. Indeed, found the researchers those using them were spending more time on tasks such as test writing or maintenance than those who weren’t.
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