The majority of software developers feel their company’s software quality could be improved, according to the Diffblue Developer Survey.
Conducted by research company Vanson Bourne, the survey found that 83% of software developers agreed their company’s software quality could be better.
When looking at factors that were contributing to poor software quality, 40% of respondents said there were too many manual processes and there were unrealistic development schedules. Almost 39% thought there was insufficient software testing within their organisation.
There were 300 respondents to the survey from the UK and US, of which 29% worked in financial services firms, and just under half think poor software quality contributed to increased costs. Just over 40% of developers think low quality software leads to delays for new releases and an increase in the amount of development work.
In order to fix the issue of poor software quality, developers are in agreement that unit tests are required. Over nine tenths of respondents feel unit tests help to improve software quality and speed up the process of code maintenance. Over half believe that releasing software without unit tests would lead to bugs, and 36% think it would lead to poor application performance.
However, the report reveals that a developer spends 20% of their time writing unit tests and even with this time investment, 48% of respondents find it difficult to achieve the unit testing coverage required by their companies. This implies it is not just a matter of spending more time on writing unit tests.
This is why software developers are looking for their companies to automate the creation of unit tests. Over half of the software developers asked think automating the creation of unit tests would lead to faster development times and more accurate code.
