In August of 2006 a U.S. government student loan service erroneously made public the personal data of as many as 21,000 borrowers on its web site, due to a software error. The bug was fixed, eventually, and the government department subsequently offered to arrange for free credit monitoring services for those affected.  Could this error and the resulting cost to the U.S. government, have been prevented if proper software testing had taken place prior to the release of the system used by the U.S. Government student loan service? According to a 2008 research report conducted by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in North Carolina, on behalf of the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST), an estimated $22.2 billion could be saved annually in the US, by implementing improved testing infrastructure that enables earlier and more effective identification and removal of software defects.

This example, and the cost incurred to the U.S. economy, should drive home the idea that software quality is essential to business success. For end users who are consuming and using the software application, success means that it delivers what they want, when they want it. For the development team tasked with creating the application, success is achieved when they’ve addressed all of the factors that may somehow affect performance. These include, but are by no means limited to functionality, reliability,accuracy and usability. http://www.elementool.com/ebook/SoftwareTestingeBook.pdf