Quality gaps cost organizations millions, report finds

Automated testing is status quo for a majority of software delivery teams today, yet two-thirds of teams say they deploy code without completing all the necessary testing – and that it costs them anywhere between $500,000 and $5M USD annually. That’s according to a recent survey Tricentis commissioned with Censuswide.

We asked over 2,700 software delivery practitioners to understand what challenges they face, from unrealistic release timelines to communication challenges and misalignment with executive leadership. Here’s what we found out.

1. Nearly half (40%) of global organizations believe poor software quality costs them $1M or more annually. Organizations in the financial services industry suffer the highest costs, with nearly half (45%) paying upwards of $5M per year due to poor software quality.
2. Teams are overwhelmingly focused on improving delivery speed (45%) over enhancing software quality (13%). The majority (63%) of global organizations ship code changes without fully testing them, citing the need to expedite release cycles (46%) and accidental slips of untested code (40%) as driving factors.
3. One-third (33%) of respondents point to poor communication and weak feedback loops between developers and testers as their biggest hurdle. This lack of alignment slows progress and increases the risk of issues slipping through the cracks.
4. The disconnect extends beyond the development and QA teams. Nearly a third of respondents point to misalignment between engineering teams and leadership as a key barrier to quality, saying they’re under constant pressure to release software too quickly or that there is a lack of clear, organization-wide quality metrics, creating confusion about how quality is evaluated.
5. Beyond communication hurdles, technical debt adds another layer of complexity. Over one-third (34%) of respondents say ongoing maintenance and unresolved technical debt are the largest obstacles to delivering high-quality software, while quarter of respondents cite budget constraints.

The good news? By helping quality engineering teams scale test automation and move faster, AI is opening new doors to productivity and performance. Almost 90% of respondents say their organizations can effectively quantify the ROI from generative AI within their software development lifecycles. And more than 80% of respondents anticipate significant productivity gains from offloading repetitive tasks to agentic AI.

The findings are clear: Software development and delivery teams must find new ways to balance the demands of delivery speed with software quality. Our report provides insights into how teams across the globe are adapting and provides a roadmap for navigating this complex environment.

Read the full report here, or register for the webinar to hear our VP of AI & ML’s take on the findings.