Code Coverage In The Financial Services Industry

Financial services has always been an industry where code coverage is widely and actively used.  In fact, among the leading US and European financial services firms (as measured by assets under management), the overwhelming majority of them use NCover within their development organizations. We believe there are a couple reasons why this is the case and a couple lessons that any development team can learn from them and start using in their own organizations.

.NET Continues To Be An Important Framework For Mission Critical Applications

Although many of us both personally and professionally may use a variety of development frameworks, the interoperability capabilities of .NET, its proven track record of being able to meet compliance regulations and its established install base continue to support its usage on a global basis within the financial services industry. Although no platform is a perfect fit for every application, the ability of .NET applications to perform on a reliable basis makes it a great choice for organizations whose applications are mission critical. You don’t have to have billions under management, however, to benefit from the power of .NET. As the number of .NET developers continues to grow and as Microsoft continues to invest in tools for .NET, even the individual developer can benefit from the framework’s proven track record.

In An Industry Where Risk Is Always Part Of The Equation, Managing Risk Is Vital

The usage of code coverage reduces risk for these organizations and provides a measurable way for individual developers and team leads alike to assess whether additions to the existing code base really represent two steps forward or one step back.  For .NET development teams, collecting coverage and then using it to address deficiencies in either the code or the testing strategy is extremely easy to accomplish and represents a very small investment.  Financial services firms may literally have millions of dollars daily that are handled by their applications.  For them, not having code coverage in place is literally like jumping off a financial cliff.  We know through our work with smaller companies they have just as much at stake.  For a startup, if the launch of the first product is a fail, there may not be a second chance.  Risk management is part of every successful development process.  Code coverage is an extremely easy way for .NET teams to measure just how much is at risk and how they can take action to reduce it.

Regardless of your size and regardless of your industry, we encourage .NET developers everywhere to keep coding and to keep covered!