Buggy App — Why do we go live?

Before we answer that question let’s make some assumptions — some of them will only apply to mobile applications, and some will be universal to any IT system. However, let’s focus on mobile applications because the mobile app ecosystem isn’t poised to decline any time soon.

In general, many people tend to prefer mobile apps over web apps for a few reasons. One of the main advantages of mobile apps is that they tend to be faster and more responsive than web apps. This is because mobile apps are designed to run on a specific platform and hardware, which allows them to take advantage of the device’s resources and capabilities. In contrast, web apps need to be loaded in a web browser, which can take longer and may not be as smooth or seamless as a native app.

Additionally, mobile apps often offer a more intuitive and user-friendly interface than web apps. Since mobile apps are designed specifically for smaller screens and touch-based input, they can be easier to navigate and use than web apps, which may require a keyboard and mouse for input.

Overall, while preferences for mobile apps versus web apps can vary, many people tend to prefer mobile apps for their convenience, speed, and user-friendliness. Looking to these, it is hard to imagine that companies decide to release an application that is not production-ready because it contains bugs known to the development team.

Recently, a very bright example of such action was the premiere of the long-awaited game Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Project RED. We saw how it all ended — the share price fell by more than 70% and a wave of criticism poured out on the studio, which took the gaming and investing world by storm.

With this in mind, let’s try to answer the question — why are applications/IT ​​systems full of known bugs being released?

Penalties, penalties, penalties…

The first argument is time, or rather the lack of it. I know from my own experience that sometimes we are contractually obliged to release an application within a given period and it is not possible to postpone the release, because it is associated with gigantic contractual penalties. In such situations, there is a simple calculation of whether releasing an application containing errors is more beneficial for us than accepting a penalty for the delay in its release.

PR over low-priority bugs

The second argument I’m aware of is the scale and importance of known bugs in the application/system that is to be implemented. A long time ago, when I started my career in IT — I worked on a project for the aviation industry. From my time spent on this project, I remember a situation where we were supposed to release a new version of the application and during the release tests a lot of low-priority bugs were found. As a tester in this project and a “quality guard” I wanted to block the release because my perfectionism did not allow me to think about releasing something that contained bugs, and then my manager taught me one of the lessons that I remember to this day. He allowed me to analyze the situation and conclude that delaying the implementation will bring more damage to PR than benefit from fixing low-priority bugs and delaying the release.

Testing in the production environment

Another reason is the very approach to the software development process — some companies do not invest resources in thorough testing of their applications. They are rather focused on some basic testing, and releasing the alpha or production version as quickly as possible. By leveraging the load balancer and the appropriate rule, the company would enable the new version of the application for the appropriate percentage of users, which is a case of classic testing by users in the production environment.

The customer decides

Another, the last but certainly not the least, reason that we can distinguish is simply being clear with the client — we are ready for the release, but we have a list of known bugs that will take N days to deal with. In this case, it is the customer who decides whether they want to receive the application in a given version or whether they prefer to wait for the fixes

And what is your opinion on releasing applications with known bugs? Let us know in the comments.