Businesses still struggle with web application quality issues

Software bugs have been a problem since the very earliest days of computing, and as we move towards more data-intensive applications and a more sophisticated and flexible user experience, QA and testing remains as vital as ever.

Development platform company Sencha has released the results of a new survey carried out by Dimensional Research, looking at current attitudes and common experiences surrounding the testing of web applications.

The findings make clear that quality remains a major issue, with 98 percent of respondents reporting quality issues that impact their business, and 53 percent saying these issues occur at least monthly. 99 percent say quality issues have direct impact on areas including including customer satisfaction (79 percent), damage to reputation (59 percent), and cost to fix problems (58 percent).

The challenges surrounding quality come from a number of areas, 94 percent say they face challenges conducting adequate QA. Automated testing is used by 79 percent, but only eight percent have a mature test automation practice.

Staffing is an issue too, 61 percent say it's harder to hire a test automation engineer than a software developer. There are also problems with taking responsibility for problems. Only 52 percent have a clear process for front line staff to flag urgent quality issues, and 44 percent don't hold employees accountable for business-impacting quality problems.

Enterprises are investing to improve application quality though, with 73 percent planning to increase testing investment in the coming year. Drivers for this increased investment include customer demand, improved time-to-market, cost reduction, and pressure from business stakeholders.

"As companies continue to build more sophisticated, data-intensive and business-critical web applications that need to be supported across a wide variety of end-user devices, the importance of effective QA will only continue to grow," says Art Landro, CEO of Sencha. "Customers have come to expect a perfect user experience every time they access an application -- no matter where they are. It's vital that companies prioritize automated testing and QA practices to keep their applications current and customers satisfied - and to stay competitive."

You can find out more in the full State of Web Application Testing report which is available on the Sencha website.

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