Why QA Isn’t a Luxury

In the early days of our agency, I found myself juggling numerous roles. Doing most of the coding at the time, I was developer by day, Quality Assurance (QA) by night. A few manual run-throughs, a couple of checks here and there, and voila! The code was tested, right? I soon realized, that was far from the truth.

As our projects became more complex, the practice of developers doubling as QA professionals started to show cracks. Instead of creating, we found ourselves dedicating more and more time towards putting out fires. In addition to our own experience, after having witnessed a few seemingly straightforward projects stall after running into a wall of bugs, we were convinced that our productivity would benefit greatly from having a dedicated QA on the team.

However, founders may need some convincing. From a founder's perspective, it can be hard to see the immediate benefits of investing in a dedicated QA team member, especially for small or early-stage projects. It's easy to believe that the project is too small to warrant such an investment or that the developers can handle the testing themselves.

To counter those arguments, I'd like to share five game-changing benefits we've discovered since a dedicated QA specialist joined our ranks:

1. Efficiency: Having someone solely focused on QA allowed the rest of the team to devote more time to what we do best: designing and building software.
2. Precision: A dedicated QA professional brought a fresh pair of eyes and was able to uncover issues that were otherwise overlooked. They catch what falls through the cracks.
3. Thoroughness: With a systematic set of well-organized test cases, we've been able to cover all aspects of functionality, which drastically reduced the risk of bugs.
4. Customer Satisfaction: Our customers appreciate the enhanced reliability of our software. After all, a bug-free experience is a joyful experience.
5. Project Health: Over time, we've realized that rigorous QA is like the immune system of our projects - catching and addressing issues before they become problematic.

While some bugs can indeed evolve into features, we've discovered that investing into solid QA practices early on is what can buy back developers’ time and can help elevate a product from ordinary to truly excelling.