Software Quality

Why is software quality important? These days, every business in every sector needs software to function. When software quality is sub-par, businesses suffer. According to a study commissioned by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in 2002 software errors were estimated to cost 0.6% of gross domestic product in the US, which translated to nearly $60 billion (NIST 2002). Some real-life examples of the cost of quality include:
- The crash of the Ariane 5 launch system, which cost many billions of dollars to develop
- The Toys "R" Us Web site failure in 1999 and 2000, in which poor performance cost the company millions of dollars
- Credit card information theft due to security defects, which cost millions