“Does your Software Testing Pay” is the question we posted four weeks ago. We then posted a simple calculation for a ROI two weeks ago.
After we posted the second blog we had a couple of comments to the effect that concentrating on defects was a very narrow focus in terms of cost recovery and benefits. This was certainly a valid criticism; we had concentrated on something that could be answered and calculated without too much effort.
Some of the suggestions that came back were as follows:
- Contributing to a better product using the information gleaned from testing
- Enhanced knowledge of the product for both testers and developers.
- Future design improvements.
- A better quality product.
No doubt more items could be added to the above list
Now we just need to cost them
Since some of these are subjective benefits, it is suggested that they be documented and then all stakeholders can assign them to a value bucket (independently). As a starting point we can use an averaged value for each benefit and then convert that into a dollar value to determine the benefit.
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