A global survey of 2,750 IT, DevOps leaders and software developers finds nearly half of respondents (45%) admit their organization prioritizes delivery speed over software quality, with 63% acknowledging their organization deploys code without fully testing it. Only 13% of respondents said their organization is focused on improving software quality.

Conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Tricentis, a provider of an application testing automation platform, more than one-third (34%) of respondents say ongoing maintenance and unresolved technical debt are the largest obstacles to delivering high-quality software. Other issues include poor communication between software development and quality assurance teams (33%) and a disconnect between leadership and development teams (29%).

The primary reasons cited for not testing code are the need to expedite release cycles (46%) and accidental slips (40%). Just under a quarter (24%) also admitted they are not confident in their test coverage.

More troubling still, 81% said software quality issues cost their business between $500,000 and $5 million every year, with nearly 40% estimating losses of more than $1 million. Two-thirds (66%) of respondents also conceded their organization is likely to suffer an outage or major disruption in the next year, with nearly a quarter (23%) deeming their organization to be at extreme risk.

Many respondents noted there is a lack of clear quality metrics provided by the organization (29%), a disconnect between leadership and development teams over what defines quality (28%), and budget constraints (25%). The top five benefits they seek from better software quality include improved team efficiency (17%), stronger customer satisfaction and retention (15%), reduced security and compliance risk (14%), increased revenue (14%), and faster delivery (14%).

Lee McClendon, chief digital and technology officer for Tricentis, said when it comes to software engineering there continues to be too much emphasis on speed over quality. The irony is that addressing quality issues in the latter stages of a DevOps workflow only serves to slow organizations down further when work needs to be redone, he added.

There is simply too much focus on metrics that track how fast software is developed versus how well, noted McClendon.

On the plus side, a total of 80% of respondents said they believe that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will enable them to improve software quality without adversely impacting the rate at which software is being developed. Nearly 90% also said they can effectively measure the return on investment on generative AI tools and platforms. However, two-thirds (66%) noted it takes investments in software development and delivery at least three years to pay off, with over one-third (34%) anticipating AI technology investments will take even longer.

The majority (82%) also said they are excited about AI agents taking on repetitive tasks in the software development lifecycle, while 84% believe AI will help teams deliver under increasingly tight deadlines. A full 89% said they trust AI agents to make decisions that impact software delivery. At the same time, bias remains a key concern for 38% of respondents, and the same percentage are wary of over-reliance on AI tools.

Finally, nearly all respondents expect autonomous testing will be useful for quality assurance (QA) testing, with the biggest impact being improving software performance (28%), overall quality (28%), analyzing test results (25%) and test case maintenance (23%).

Hopefully, the quality of applications will improve in the age of AI, but the one thing that is certain is that when it comes to achieving that goal there is still a lot of room for improvement.