One in five software projects lacks effective QA due to strategic neglect rather than simply a lack of staff
Quality assurance (QA) isn’t a staffing issue. It’s a strategy issue. Our recent survey of hundreds of software teams showed that 13% of projects had zero formal QA support. But the surface numbers don’t tell the full story. A much larger group operated with one stressed QA person covering an entire release cycle, or worse, had no QA arm at all, pushing all quality responsibilities onto developers.
When companies do this, the fallout is predictable. Bugs slip through. Releases get delayed. Customers start filing support tickets, or just leave. These results aren’t surprising, and they’re not just about operational gaps. They’re the logical outcome of leaving a critical piece of your software business under-managed.
The problem here isn’t headcount. It’s misalignment. Teams make the mistake of treating QA like a budget line item instead of product infrastructure. If you’re shipping without structured testing, or without knowing what’s being tested at all, you’re playing a high-risk game that scales badly.
Almost half of surveyed projects had no structured testing processes. Worse, 72% weren’t even measuring test coverage. That means they had no handle on how much of their product was being tested. Without visibility, there’s no control. And without control, quality problems don’t get spotted until they do damage.
This gets expensive fast. Technical debt already eats up to 40% of the average IT budget. On a national level, the U.S. economy loses an estimated $2.41 trillion annually to bugs, downtime, and outdated systems, issues tied directly to poor quality assurance.
It’s simple: if QA remains an afterthought, the price shows up later, with interest. Avoid that. QA has to sit in the strategic core of your software operation, not off to the side. Don’t throw more bodies at the problem. Lead with structure, responsibility, and clarity. The returns are there if you build it right.
Developer-only QA practices foster confirmation bias and result in inadequate test coverage
There’s a common idea in engineering teams that developers can own the entire testing workflow. It sounds efficient. Less handoff, more speed. But reality doesn’t cooperate with that logic. When developers are the only layer of QA, quality control starts failing where it matters most, at the point of uncertainty.
Here’s the issue. Developers test their own logic, and naturally, they test what they believe should work. That’s when confirmation bias kicks in. They focus on proving their code runs, not on exploring where it breaks. And meanwhile, customers are always better at doing things the system isn’t designed to handle. You don’t catch those scenarios without someone trained to look, not just for defects, but for risk.
The survey backs this up. Teams that relied only on developers for QA had dev-to-QA ratios far outside the recommended range, 3:1 to 5:1. In many cases, there was no testing function at all. Most of these projects weren’t tracking test coverage, either. So they had no basis to judge what was being tested and what was being ignored.
This leads to slower releases, urgent bug patches, and unhappy users. The damage isn’t just technical, it’s brand-level. You can’t scale a quality product pipeline if testing ends up being reactive.
Developer participation in QA is essential, they own the code, but they shouldn’t work in isolation. Testing is about finding what developers didn’t think to look for. That takes a different skillset, and a different mindset.
For leaders, the takeaway is clear. Don’t mistake technical skill for full-spectrum quality control. Developers are not a substitute for visibility, process, or accountability. If QA is reduced to internal checks with no external scrutiny, you’re not removing risk. You’re just ignoring where it starts.
Quality assurance must be elevated to a strategic function with c-suite-level commitment.
QA is not a tactical clean-up act, it’s a growth lever. In today’s software-driven economy, product quality defines the customer experience, system stability, and revenue performance. Yet too many organizations still approach QA as something to “fit in” at the end of development, if time allows. That’s outdated. Leaders who treat QA as optional end up paying for it later, in cost and credibility.
When quality issues reach production, they’re far more expensive to fix. According to industry research, bugs found in production can cost four to five times more to resolve than defects caught during development. In some environments, the cost delta shoots even higher, up to 30 times. That kind of waste isn’t sustainable, especially as systems scale and accelerate.
Prioritizing QA early allows teams to prevent quality problems instead of reacting to them. It’s also faster. Teams that build with quality in mind from the start move faster through releases, introduce fewer regressions, and protect their user base. Strategic QA builds reliability into the system. That translates directly into better engineering velocity and stronger retention.
Yet the survey shows just 53% of teams have formal testing processes. This means nearly half of software projects are being shipped without defined quality workflows, no documented standards, no consistent checkpoints, no high-level accountability. And that’s the core problem, leadership hasn’t made QA its responsibility.
For QA to work, it needs ownership at the top. It should be discussed in the same breath as product, design, and delivery. It needs a voice in roadmap decisions. Quality leads must have the authority to set standards and challenge priorities when deadlines create risk. Without that governance, quality drops first when schedules tighten.
If you’re shipping software, you’re responsible for defending the user experience, the security of your systems, and the long-term viability of your tech stack. QA isn’t overhead. It’s control. And without it, you’re not running at full capability. You’re just hoping things hold together after launch. That’s not strategy, that’s chance.
Strategic QA investment is achievable through clear processes
You don’t need a massive QA team to fix the quality problem, you need clarity. Most projects run into quality issues not because they lack headcount, but because no one’s owning the process. Roles are vague. Test responsibility bounces around. Coverage isn’t tracked. That’s what breaks execution. Not scale. Not complexity. Lack of structure.
Strategic QA doesn’t start with hiring, it starts with definition. Write down how testing works, what “done” means, and who’s responsible for each phase of the release cycle. Build checkpoints into your dev pipeline where quality is enforced, not assumed. Align everyone with a clear view of how issues are surfaced, tracked, and resolved. This closes the gap between intention and outcome.
You also need to distribute responsibility the right way. Developers should absolutely test their code, but they shouldn’t handle the entire risk profile alone. Support them with dedicated QA professionals or shared specialists who can cut across teams. This shared-responsibility model tightens feedback loops, improves test depth, and catches issues early without slowing delivery.
Automation matters, but you need to apply it with intent. Start focused. Target high-risk or high-frequency tasks, authentication flows, core transactions, platform availability checks, and build from there. Automation at scale only works when the foundation is solid and maintainable. Pushing too fast without structure creates test fragility and false confidence.
Visibility is non-negotiable. If teams don’t see what’s tested, they can’t make informed decisions. Simple tools can show which parts of the codebase are well-covered, and which areas are exposed. This lets leadership allocate resources and attention based on actual gaps, not assumptions.
Finally, create a lightweight QA Center of Excellence. Nothing bulky. Just a centralized group that defines testing strategy, shares tooling standards, and tracks key metrics across dev teams. This gives QA a baseline of influence and consistency, without requiring massive overhead or bureaucracy.
Structured, accountable QA is a leadership decision. Teams that approach it with precision, not just process, build better software faster and avoid downstream chaos. High-performing companies don’t wait for failure to prove the need for quality. They institutionalize it long before it becomes urgent. That’s how you scale with confidence.
Main highlights
- Strategic QA is often missing: One in five software projects lacks structured QA due to leadership neglect, not headcount. Executives should treat QA as a critical business function, not a cost center.
- Developer-only testing creates blind spots: Relying solely on developers for QA fuels confirmation bias and leads to coverage gaps. Leaders should enforce balanced QA ownership with dedicated professionals to reduce rework and delays.
- QA must be part of top-level strategy: QA directly impacts delivery speed, cost efficiency, and customer loyalty. Leadership needs to give QA equal weight alongside product, design, and engineering to avoid high-cost failures.
- Quality scales through process: The most effective QA investments come from process clarity, focused automation, and shared accountability, not big teams. Leaders should standardize QA practices and assign clear internal ownership to scale product quality intelligently.
