With headline after headline focusing on software breakdowns and business failures, it’s never been more obvious how important robust testing procedures are for transformation success. In March of 2024, four critical system failures for large, country-wide, UK chains occurred in quick succession. How did this happen, and how could proper testing methodology have helped in this situation?
McDonald’s maladies
The first victim came on March 15, 2024. Leading burger franchise, McDonalds, had a global system meltdown in their restaurants. Over 5,000 restaurants in the UK, Australia and Japan, plus other countries, suddenly stopped being able to take orders.
Cyber attack? No. A ‘configuration change’ via a third-party provider – likely a software update – that hadn’t been tested, brought the burger chain to their knees as they couldn’t take orders around the world.
Supermarket sweep of double meltdowns
Not long after, the second victim was made apparent. Fast-forward 24 hours and two of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, suffered a similar fate.
Sainsbury’s were forced to apologize to customers after most of their online grocery deliveries couldn’t be delivered due to technical issues; they were also unable to offer contactless payments in store. Their tech issues later transpired to be due an overnight software update.
As if out of sympathy a key rival, Tesco, had a similar issue and were forced to cancel a small number of orders. According to Miya Knights, a retail technology analyst, this could have been the result of insufficient software testing. “If a major update was being made to a live system,” Knights said, “there needed to be rigorous testing protocols in place [and] rigorous release planning.”
Flaky software hits bakery
Not wanting to miss the IT action, early on Wednesday March 20, Greggs, the bakery chain, announced they’d been hit by an IT issue that was affecting card payments and they’d been forced to close some stores and only accept cash payments.
This issue was caused by, once again, another software update according to Paul Cooper, head of IT at UK card payment solutions provider, takepayments.
“Last weekend,” Cooper said, “Sainsburys shared that the error in the payment systems was due to an overnight software update that encountered problems, which affected the ability to take contactless payments the next day. Although we don’t know for sure, it sounds like the supermarket may not have tested the update sufficiently. It’s important for any business to test their system updates thoroughly and to keep any updates local.”
All four firms will have experienced a drop in revenue for the affected period. Some of them may have to deal with a lot of customer complaints. Some may experience a hit on share prices. All will have experienced a negative mark against their brand experience, which they all pride themselves on.
One weekend of technical mayhem was all it took to remind organizations how integral it is to test software thoroughly before deployment. Invest in the right testing tools and you won’t be caught unawares at the next software update.
