Are people going to test more and develop less during the economic slowdown?

I heard this comment at a testing conference that I was at this morning: "People (IT managers) will test more and develop less during this economic slowdown".

What do you think?

Will IT managers in your organizations/clients spend more time in software testing and maintenance than taking up new development projects?

Can you also take a moment to vote here?

http://blog.vmlogix.com/2008/11/25/will-people-test-more-and-develo...

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James Christie on November 25, 2008 at 11:13am: I don't buy the argument, but it all depends on the organisation.

If organisations have a core of in-house staff then I think that they will try to do as much as possible with those staff, without using contractors. If the organisation doesn't have specialist testers but uses developers and seconded users then I reckon that testing will suffer in the downturn, though without specialist testers it's not going to be done well under any conditions. If there are specialist testers then they should be able to stand their corner,

If development is outsourced then it depends on the contract. If there is a baseline level of development effort that has to be paid for then the organisation will probably try to stay within that. If the contract doesn't specify how that effort should be split up then there may be a temptation to use developers rather than testers, so that as much development work as possible can be done.

If all development work is contracted out on a project by project basis then organisations will cut right back.

The basic rule in these tough economic conditions is that discretionary expenditure will be cut out where possible. Even if this means higher future costs the pressure will be on managers to reduce costs now, and let their successor worry about the consequences in a few years.

I really can't see how any of this is good news for testers. I very much hope I'm wrong though.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ido Schacham on November 25, 2008 at 3:43pm: This sounds like one of those statements said at testing conferences to leverage the tester ego.

What were the arguments behind this statement? At a time when investors are pulling back their investments, companies get hesitant about spending their software dollars, employees get fired because of lack of budgets, how does more testing get done?

In my opinion it's on the contrary. When budgets are tight products need to get shipped out as soon as possible as cheaply as possible. Decreasing the testing time surely makes that happen, even if the quality of the software isn't as good.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kristina on November 28, 2008 at 11:57am: Totaly agree with Ido.
I think that it might happen, that projects budget will be saved on testing part, especially when we are talking about small companies.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Linda Wilkinson on November 25, 2008 at 5:41pm: I think people will develop less AND test less during the economic slowdown. I believe staff will be potentially reduced across the board and focus will be on mission-critical applications only; nice-to-haves and projects without significant ROI will be deferred.

- Linda; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Srihari Palangala on November 26, 2008 at 5:02am: The spirit of the original statement was that in tough conditions there will be less of new systems developed. And people want to leverage their existing critical systems more (via bug fixes, maintenance, minor enhancements etc.). All of these means more use of the testing engineer time and less developer time spent.

@Ido - does that clarify?

@Linda - I agree with your premise. For the mission critical apps and high ROI apps you mention - don't you see more tester involvement than dev. involvement? I.e., wont the ratio be skewed towards having more testers on duty?

@James - Your statement about trying to do as much as possible with existing staff - aligns with my clarification above, though I think that testers are likely to be stressed more than dev. during these times. Do you agree?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James Christie on November 26, 2008 at 2:03pm: Do I agree that testeres are likely to be used more than developers?

I'm afraid I don't agree. I think they will be used less. If the company wants to keep its in-house staff busy rather then laying them off, then I think that these in-house testers will be fully occupied. However, I can't see them getting any more work than before relative to the developers. If companies have the chance to cut testing costs during a downturn then they'll make recklessly optimistic assumptions to justify skimping on testing. It's foolish, but it's human nature.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ido Schacham on November 26, 2008 at 3:38pm: I definitely agree with that.

It's nice to boost tester ego with the topic of this discussion, but it sounds too far fetched. Show me even one company that tested more and developed less during a time of crisis. Even in non-times of crisis most companies don't invest more time on testing than is necessary!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Linda Wilkinson on November 26, 2008 at 3:40pm: No, I don't think there will be any more tester involvement than usual, in fact, I believe that regardless of project size, it's unlikely more testing staff will be added to a given effort, leaving less people to do more work. I believe this will result in more risk-based testing and potentially less robust testing efforts.

In my experience, the last consideration anyone makes during tough economic times is how they can do more than usual. If they slow down the work and concentrate on maintenance and high-ROI projects, I believe it more likely they'll cut staff accordingly, rather than utilize everyone they've got to do everything in more depth.

It is also my experience that QA staff are more at risk than development staff. In a pinch, many companies believe development staff can test their own stuff. Then they have a few Really Bad or disastrous migrations and have to hire them back.

- Linda; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Bob French on November 28, 2008 at 3:50pm: Im luck in that the company I work for develops shrik wrap income tax programs for professionals. Good old Uncle Sam. The economy may go up and down...but you always have to file your taxes. :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by phil kirkham on November 28, 2008 at 3:54pm: anyone working for a company that develops software for undertakers ?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jay Philips on November 28, 2008 at 4:50pm: I almost think that if they develop more they will test less. Or the will develop less & test less.

Some project that I'm on now, I have to push to get testing even on the task list.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by phil kirkham on November 29, 2008 at 9:04pm: "We have changed the release model so that instead of focusing on quality and features our release is now defined by timeliness and features. Quality is not regarded to be that important "

Read more about MySQL 5.1 released as GA with crashing bugs

( You might want to skip the bug details and read the section titled So what went wrong with MySQL 5.1 ? ); ▶ Reply to This