The Challenges

Ensuring the quality of a product or service is crucial for software development success. However, several challenges can arise in achieving this goal:

Challenge: Finding the Right Balance

Balancing high code coverage with timely releases can be difficult. Teams must identify and prioritize the most critical untested code changes to avoid delaying deployment. New code changes, especially those lacking proper coverage, can slip through and introduce hidden bugs, causing unexpected regressions and post-release chaos and instability.

Challenge: Inconsistent Coverage Tracking

QA teams may struggle to track and ensure comprehensive testing of code changes, leading to gaps in coverage and undetected issues. This can be attributed to the decentralized nature of testing, making it difficult to maintain a holistic view of coverage across all related code changes.

Challenge: Low Release Confidence

Without a comprehensive view of code coverage, potential risks, and overall software quality in a centralized platform, releasing software becomes a gamble, leading to uncertainty and reluctance to deploy. Low confidence can trigger stricter manual testing or delayed releases, hindering development velocity and responsiveness to market demands.

Challenge: Technical Debt

Untested code acts like a ticking time bomb, hiding issues that can explode later, leading to performance problems, security risks, and costly fixes down the line. Untested code accumulates over time, creating a larger and more complex "debt" that becomes progressively harder and more expensive to address, impacting long-term project sustainability.

Challenge: Measuring Progress and ROI

Quantifying the long-term benefits of improved code coverage and demonstrating its return on investment can be difficult, making it challenging to secure resources and buy-in.