‘Biggest Blunder in Banking History’: Citibank Wired $900 Million to Lenders by Mistake.
We all know how Wire Money Transfer has made life easy for all of us. But, a bank as big as Citibank made a wrong money transfer worth $900 million.
Software Systems are a great blessing and solve so many problems, but if they misbehave, they can create major issues. Each software failure costs money in the time spent fixing it, in halting production, in lost revenue, or in another way.
In today’s world, we’re heavily dependent on software systems for our financial management, investments, healthcare, shopping, dining, and a lot more. If something as critical as the hospital management system misbehaves, it could cost lives.
Let’s imagine what could happen if software systems did not work as expected -
- I am unable to send messages on WhatsApp
- I am unable to access my bank account
- My phone has suddenly stopped working
- My car‘s horn is not working
- I cannot order food on Zomato or Swiggy
- Uber/Ola apps do not let me book a cab
There can be countless such examples and the list is surely never-ending.
Ain’t Developers the best QA?
“It works on my machine,” said a developer and we frequently come across such cases in the software world.
A developer does a great job in developing products and it does work well on their machine. Imagine if the code working on the developer machine were shipped to production?
Why QA should be done by QA experts
Quality Assurance is not about just validating that the system is performing how it should be. It is also about assuring that the system isn’t performing in ways it shouldn’t be. An expert QA tester can delicately go about pushing a system to (and beyond) its limits to ensure quality and appropriate functionality.
Quality assurance testing includes:
- a critical approach to the project, often missing in the developer’s tests. Testing is a creative, destructive process in which every aspect of a project is carefully looked at and picked apart to ensure it works how it’s expected and supposed to.
- more than just a post-programming evaluation. QA should be an integral part of each phase of the systems development life cycle (SDLC).
- searching for the flaws in the project. This requires a neutral and objective set of eyes and critical analysis to find anything that might go wrong.
- providing truthful feedback to the customer while demoing presentations that help to stay on the same page during SDLC.
A dedicated QA engineer brings a fresh perspective and interacts with the product features the way a new user would. A person with experience in QA will try to break the application, finding the faults in the system long before any user is exposed to them, which is exactly what you want to happen during the testing of your product.
We’ve all come across jokes like above, but the bugs that these QA Testers find are important and can be critical at assuring the software’s quality.
QA is invaluable
The importance of quality assurance may not be evident, but it is invaluable. Think of QA as a water filter, finding and fixing the impurities in your tap water. Even though you might not easily be able to see these impurities, they are there and they can make you sick. This is what QA does for software development. Even if the flaws are not evident, it is important to test for, find, and fix them before they make the software sick or broken.
A product that hasn’t been tested may look okay at first glance, but once you start to scrutinize it, you find the issues that should have been filtered out. This is the value that QA provides and this is why it is such a critical and highly recommended part of software development.
Do share your thoughts in the comments section!
If you enjoyed reading, please do support with claps & share.
