Every designer has faced it at least once, but most of us face it nearly every day. After spending days, weeks, or even months designing this great new software, suddenly a defect rears its head and everything comes crashing down. You feel as if your first born child just spit on your grave. It is the ultimate betrayal that this piece of your blood, sweat, and tears is rebelling against you. Am I being melodramatic? Perhaps… but the truth is that I have banged my head against the computer desk repeatedly thanks to those hated irreparable software defects in the last stages of develop. Is it possible to design software and avoid bugs completely? Well, maybe.
The truth is that more often than not, defects are going to pop up. The key is to catch them early enough that they can be repaired without having to start from scratch. The only way to make sure this happens is to have some kind of quality control framework in place to constantly be on alert for any bugs while the design is still in process.
Do you remember doing science projects as a kid and studying the scientific method? Dig out those textbooks because this same method is applicable in software design. You need to a have a predetermined set of processes that can be repeated throughout your software development. By using automated tests to check for predetermined expected outcomes, you can catch bugs when they first crop up. You need to repeat the automated tests throughout your development and keep a running record so that when a problem is flagged, you know which section it occurred in and you can quickly repair it without spending weeks searching over months of work to find it.