[plif]

Seems high, but this is par for the course for this type of work. You would usually estimate this in terms of months for a team. Let's say a team of 4 for simplicity -- that brings it to ~3 months.

I'd also be careful with the term "programming hours". I'm not sure how the news article got that or who said that initially, but it seems like a misrepresentation of the type of work needed. That estimate almost certainly includes everything involved in getting the code to production. You can imagine that means a lot of QA, red tape and holding the code's hand through environments.

[azinman2]

Sounds like the QA wasn’t very good from the beginning considering the number of actual bugs reported.

[plif]

Not trying to defend anyone, but I'm sure we can find many other reasons why there are so many bugs here unrelated to QA :)

[worik]

What is QA if it cannot be blamed for low quality?

[plif]

It's a rubber stamp like many other things in this development model.

Not saying their QA is useful, but it's not tough to imagine their QA being many layers removed from decision making. ie: Program Manager -> Product Owner -> Project Manager -> Business Analyst -> QA -- not even mentioning reporting lines.

That person in QA at the end of the chain is likely following a script written & approved by the layers above them to a T. It's highly unlikely that they are empowered to go off script or raise tangential issues. Doing so may even cost them their job.

[vntok]

If the specs are bad, QA will find low quality spots of undefined behaviour (anything goes, ergo it's fine), or even actual logic issues in the specs.

However the software is coded to specs, not to QA's own desires, so the bugs stay.