Technology is ever-evolving, and innovations happen at every nook and corner of the world every day and perhaps every hour. Despite seeing such advances in technology, there can still be massive software development failures. You may be part of some groundbreaking innovations, and you know how stressful and exhausting it can get while trying to deliver things faster just seeing the competition around.
Let’s take a moment and admit that failures are these not so good things, but they tend to happen anyways. Let’s also accept that they happen more than multiple times, and there is no clear justification to it so as to why (meaning it can be due to several reasons). We know and understand the sense of regretfulness afterward; it is such a traumatic experience!. However, all we can do and keep doing is try. Try, try and try our best not to make or at least not repeat the same mistake to a level of absolute screw up.
Faulty softwares that are absolute screw-ups
Now let’s look at some real-time software development failures examples and learn what they are trying to communicate to us. Note, every failure is a true story of red flags. The protagonists are just like you (a team leader, project manager, or developer), and they have unexplainable tech powers, just like the Ironman. So, without further ado, let’s get into it.
1. Potentiallly a deadly software failure in Medicine infusion
Some software failures are non-negotiable and deadly, too, just like this Medicine infusion pump. What went wrong? These medicines pump equipment, aka Alaris Pump, were manufactured by CareFusion. These pumps were supposed to automate the delivery of medicines and fluids to the hospital patients, so far, so good. But then, due to some failure in the software, the equipment had the potential to either overdose or not deliver the drugs to patients at all. (some of them were emergency instances). So, some four days later, the company pulled back the software issuing a Class I Recall (the use of equipment can cause serious health consequences and even death).
2. A bug made the robbery easy
Not to mention the bug also helped in catching the robbery
Once upon a time in Bangladesh (exactly in 2016, precisely in March), a group of wicked, witty hackers stole 81 million and got away with it via a bug. They hit this jackpot in 4 transactions and aimed to steal $870 million more until they made a typing mistake. And thank goodness the transaction got declined. Coming to the saddest part, the bank found this heist after they found a bug in the printer that automatically prints the transactions and that too after several days.
The bug caused a glitch that interrupted the printing process, and no surprise they found it. It was too late and gave plenty of time for the thieves to cover all their tracks means they were never caught. These instances of software failures are more likely to repeat if there due to a lack of testing. Have useful tools and excellent skills working on your projects, and don’t waste too much managing your testing. Or even better, leave the management to QA Touch, and you focus more on your quality.
3. The bug that led an angry Frenchwoman to divorce
Yes! As hahaha and strange and as it may sound, but that’s true. A Frenchman sues Uber over a bug that revealed his affair to his wife and led to an unusual divorce. Uber sent notifications to devices even after the user logged out due to a bug. And the Frenchman happened to call the uber from his wife’s phone, and the notification kept coming to the wife afterward. Through those notifications, the wife caught the cheating and filed for a divorce against the man. So, the angry Frenchman sues Uber with $45 million in the name of damages.
4. Flaws are probably not the right things to cover!
Equifax is the evidence…
Do you think it’s important to take accountability for failures that genuinely happen from your end? What if we don’t do that? What big of a difference does that make? You being a corporate and accepting a mistake is not 100% well received by society, but if you hide it for x,y,z reasons, you are in a hell of trouble. Equifax did what it shouldn’t have done. Equifax (one of the famous credit reporting agencies) hid one of its most significant flaws and put 143 million Americans’ data in devastation. How?
A software being vulnerable to hackers is a big dilemma for 21st-century manhood, and many companies are working on that. Equifax was no exception, and hackers stole over 143 million consumer records, including names, social security numbers, birth dates, and worse, their credit card numbers. The agency kept the breach a secret for so long, and people couldn’t get more unhappy and mad at the company. This does question the companies’ morality, and they need to stop being too scared to accept the flaws.
5. A glitch caused target detection issues in F-35 fighter planes
We have another pivotal software failure that caused a target detection problem in F-35 fighter planes. As you can see, these failed software systems that we are addressing are sensitive and typically need close attention. The reason being that they are matters of safety and security, individually or together as a nation. It is so crucial for fighter pilots to keep their targets in check like always. Now, how can they do the job if their target is interrupted or diverted? Isn’t that scary? Yeah, the engineers found that the bug can inaccurately detect the target, and boom, you put yourself, your peers, and others in danger. The software couldn’t see a single or multiple or no targets at all in the sky ringing the bell to the world (a known news agency headline reads ‘F-35’s are seeing double’).
6. A wrong siren that shook Hawaii for 30 minutes
The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s alarm made an utterly false siren due to some design flaws. It warned people of a missile strike on Hawaii. That being said, it’s ultimately a human error and presumably gave so many people a heart attack. The agency informed everybody of the wrong alert after 30 minutes of the alarm in January 2018.
7. Investment bank undervalues SolarCity Corp by 400million with a touch of a glitch
An investment bank undervalued the SolarCity Corp by $400 million that came for their assistance for a company sale. Tesla Motors signed the agreement and took over the company for $2.6 billion before the glitch was detected. However, it was too late by then, but Tesla did clear some of that difference in the company’s stock.
Conclusion
With that happy ending, we want to conclude that flaws are common. Being accountable and accepting responsibility can help so many people, even you as an organization. If you like the type of content we publish, do subscribe to us by clicking subscribe to blog button and give us a thumbs up on our social media, where we do a lot of social sharing and fun.
