“Yes, we are to blame for the latest project delay!”

Let’s get straight to the point: Yes, we, the test management team at blue.works, are “to blame” for a recent delay in a current SAP project. And: This blog post has nothing to do with error culture and fuck-up nights. But before anyone shakes their heads, let us briefly explain why this is actually good news.

In the world of software development, testing is not just a phase or a task – it is extremely important, as good test and quality management creates confidence in the system and, of course, at the end of the day, money should be saved. We want to uncover error states and effects before they become a problem. And that is exactly what we have done. We discovered an error that was so significant that it required the project to be redesigned.

So testing shows the presence of bugs and it is a fallacy that no bugs mean a usable system.

Our task is therefore to look for precisely these errors, make them transparent and eliminate them before they can have serious consequences. So we are somehow happy about every error we discover during testing. These ultimately help to create a more robust, reliable system.

Furthermore, this incident underlines the immense importance of early testing. “Early testing saves time and money” is another important argument. It would have been a minor disaster if we had only discovered such an error during production. By identifying this error early in the process, we were able to avoid potentially much bigger challenges – and associated costs – in later development phases or even after go-live.

So yes, we are taking the “blame” for this delay – but we are doing it with our heads held high. Because every delay we experience now is a small price to pay for the security and stability that we ultimately offer our project and our customer.

With this in mind, dear community, let’s celebrate the test failures, because they are the milestones on the road to excellence and quality.

Note: No test manager was during or after the writing of this article terminated and all SAP systems are in a state of continuous improvement.