Survey Reveals Almost Three Quarters Have 'Serious Problems' with Defects,
Even After Code Review
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- A new white paper by
International Data Corporation (IDC), found existing software quality
approaches at most companies are inadequate to address the internal and
external costs of software defects. Sponsored by Coverity, the IDC white
paper "Improving Software Quality to Drive Business Agility," found that
development organizations find major problems with their software even
after quality assurance and spend significant amounts of effort and time to
repair those defects. Depending on organizational size, respondents from
the IDC survey indicated that the costs of debugging are significant,
reaching up to $22 million each year for some companies.
The white paper presents the results of a survey of North American
companies, ranging from 250 to 10,000 employees, which were polled in the
second quarter of 2008. The survey, commissioned by Coverity(TM), indicated
that developers today see code becoming increasingly complex, with 63
percent of respondents stating that they expected code to become more
complex in the coming year. Compounding the impact of this issue, 72
percent of respondents stated their debugging process remains problematic.
Respondents to the survey were also found to be overly optimistic about
both their defect levels and the success of internal QA environments in
identifying and repairing code problems.
"Quality software remains a key business differentiator. Businesses and
the IT organizations supporting them have no choice with regard to quality
initiatives and the need to address the debilitating costs of software
defects," said Melinda Ballou, program director for IDC's Application
Life-Cycle Management research. "Organizations should evaluate current
process and organizational approaches to software quality in combination
with automated approaches for code analysis and testing to help enable more
secure, successful, better managed software implementations."
According to the findings of the survey, the quality of today's
software is affected by the increasingly complex nature of code, cause by
geographically distributed teams, outsourcing, legacy code, the use of open
source code and the emergence of multi-threaded applications among other
sources. As evidence of this, over 50 percent or respondents stated they
find between 1 and 10 critical defects that require patches in the first
year after releasing software into production.
"Based on our collaboration with IDC, the industry now has hard data
confirming what nearly every software development organization has
suspected for years -- quality problems are consuming significant resources
and still compromise the integrity of software in the field," said Ben
Chelf, CTO of Coverity. "Development organizations today need innovative
tools that automate the tedious process of defect detection so their valued
developers can stay focused on delivering new features and functionality
instead of debugging problems left over from previous releases."
The full IDC white paper sponsored by Coverity "Improving Software
Quality to Drive Business Agility," Doc # 212971, June 2008 is available
for download at:
http://www.coverity.com/library/pdf/IDC_Improving_Software_Quality_June_2008.p
df
About Coverity
Coverity (http://www.coverity.com), the leader in improving software
quality and security, is a privately held company headquartered in San
Francisco. Coverity's groundbreaking technology enables developers to
control complexity in the development process by automatically finding and
helping to repair critical software defects and security vulnerabilities
throughout the application lifecycle. More than 450 leading companies
including ARM, Phillips, RIM, Rockwell-Collins, Samsung and UBS rely on
Coverity to help them ensure the delivery of superior software.
Coverity is a registered trademark of Coverity, Inc. All other company
and product names are the property of their respective owners.
SOURCE Coverity, Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.coverity.com
CONTACT:
Jim Shissler, Director, Public Relations of
Coverity, Inc., +1-415-694-5342, jshissler@coverity.com; or Steve
Eisenstadt of Page One Public Relations, +1-919-781-8096,
steve@pageonepr.com, for Coverity, Inc.
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