Software is the backbone of digitalization. However, with every new application, peripheral system or feature, not only the benefits increase, but also the complexity - and therefore the risk of costly errors. What used to be a bug wave is now a bug flood.
In 2013, a study by the Cambridge Judge Business School showed that software errors cause annual damage of USD 312 billion worldwide - which at the time was equivalent to USD 593,000 per minute. But this figure is now history. Error costs are growing in secret, year by year, minute by minute. Very few companies are consciously aware of this development, as the costs often arise invisibly in the background: through rework, delays, failures and technical debt.
As you read this paragraph, error costs are adding up to millions worldwide. The clock is ticking incessantly - and with every minute that passes, the economic damage caused by software errors grows.
Current technical reports such as the CISQ Report 2022 confirm this worrying trend: in the USA alone, USD 2.41 trillion is lost annually due to poor software quality. Extrapolated to the global market and with a view to the technological development of recent years, we are already in the range of USD 21 to 28 million in error costs - per minute - by 2025.
What has happened in the meantime? The reason for this escalation lies in the pace of digitalization. It has brought forth a flood of new software solutions, but with every innovation, the number of potential sources of error also increases. While the complexity of systems increases, test coverage often lags behind. This turns a bug wave into a bug flood - with dramatic consequences for budgets, schedules and the company's reputation.
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The dramatic thing is that these sums do not appear as a single item on the balance sheet. Instead, they manifest themselves in general project delays, decreasing customer numbers, declining sales or loss of reputation. Analyses by Siemens, ITIC, IBM and New Relic, among others, show that downtimes and error-related expenses are now among the biggest economic risks in IT.
The underlying economic rule is simple: the costs of an error increase the later it is discovered in the development process. Investing now in systematic quality assurance and shift-left approaches not only protects your systems, but also your company from the next flood of bugs and the associated consequences.
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