Bespoke software development and why you should pay for bug fixing

Why should I pay you to fix bugs in software you've developed? That's a totally reasonable question we sometimes get asked by a new client when we're discussing what happens after their software is launched. Our answer and the thinking behind it goes something like this:

1. We're developing a bespoke software application just for you. Finding and fixing bugs is part of the process.


2. We test thoroughly but we can't guarantee we'll find every bug before the software goes live. We'll find and fix as many as we can but inevitably some bugs will stay undiscovered until real users start hitting the system.
   
   We could test more but we're in the business of building affordable, high quality business web applications, not complex finance software or critical flight control systems. Some software clearly has to have a whole extra level of testing but that will come at a price that our clients just wouldn't accept.


3. We get the overall quality of the system to a point where it is more than good enough to go live and then we hand over to the client for acceptance testing. This is a really important stage - we want the client to be doubly sure that they are happy with quality and that the software is ready for real users.


4. Then we're into live service. It's at this point that we move clients on to an application support agreement. Bugs occasionally get found, logged in our support portal, prioritised, fixed, tested and released - all done within agreed response times. The whole process is managed efficiently and everyone sees a high quality, responsive service.
   
   We think quite carefully about the cost of that application support service. It depends on the complexity of the finished software and our professional judgement of the number of issues we're likely to see. And some clients want more of a front line support service - they pay us more to take enquiries from their end users and not just to fix bugs.

Maybe we could do application support differently. Perhaps we could offer a 12 months warranty period. We could even say that bug fixing is "free". But it's not the approach we choose to take - we’d inevitably increase our day rates to cover the cost of all that "free" bug fixing and it's not clear that our customers would get a better service. Instead our approach is to wrap a high quality application support service around fixing bugs and then charge our clients a reasonable fee for that service.