Effects Of Early User-Testing On Software Quality - Experiences From A Case Study

It is a well-established fact that the usability of a software package increases if it has been tested with users and usability flaws have been corrected. However, this presentation does not focus on usability issues but on the effects of early user-testing on software code quality determined as the number of errors discovered in function tests. In analysing the results of an extensive software update cycle, the authors found that functional requirements based on the results of early user-testing resulted in program code that had half the number of the errors (and less than one-fifth of the critical errors) found in code based solely on requirements emanating from users' verbal opinions.