How QA Testing Prevents Downtime and Boosts Speed

Founders often think that QA is just an added cost to be managed. But in reality, QA and software testing are all about revenue. Here’s how: 1 - Preventing downtime Downtime costs $6k+ PER MINUTE for the average software company. If your software goes down, it might cost you revenue directly… or it might be more indirect. Where customers call to complain, you pay for customer service and block customers from using your product. They don’t renew. They don’t upgrade. They don’t give testimonials. 2 - Preventing defects/bugs Defects are costly, too. We’ve heard stories of companies losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue PER DAY due to defects. And other stories of massive customer churn due to big defects. You can’t completely eliminate defects, but you shouldn’t ignore the fact that they are costly, and investing in testing finds them so that you can solve them and improve your overall QA process. 3 - Preventing roadmap delays I have yet to meet a product leader who’s not frustrated (or getting burned) by roadmap delays. These delays are almost *always* connected to last-minute testing and bugfixes. Which can delay new features by days, weeks, or more. This is a revenue problem: The “Cost of Delay” is a metric we should all take more seriously. It answers the question, “How much revenue do we lose by shipping late?” With good, fast testing, product teams can actually hit their roadmap goals and gain insights on how to improve the overall quality. “Cost of Delay” is a great way to get the organization to invest in testing + QA!

I tried every software development approach and finally found a secret weapon that guarantees both quality and speed. I used to think QA as the final checkpoint. But this approach heavily slowed down the process. No founders want slower delivery. They demand both speed and quality. That's why I decide to integrate QA from the start: 1, Joins product discussions - Shapes requirements before coding - Identifies risks upfront - Prevents costly rebuilds 2, Continuous testing cycles - Daily feedback loops - Real-time bug catching - Offering real user perspective 3, Prevention over fixes - Risk assessment pre-sprint - Automated testing from start - Clear acceptance criteria The results surprise me and satisfy all of my clients: - 50% faster development cycles - 90% fewer post-release issues - Zero critical production bugs QA teams shouldn't be firefighters. Treat them as a secret weapon.

8 weeks. That’s all we had. In 2021, just before Thanksgiving, I was brought in to help a major retailer. The year before, they had lost nearly £1 million in only 1.5 hours of downtime. The failure was so severe that the Development Head was fired. This time, there were no non-functional requirements in place. The QA Head and I had to prevent history from repeating itself. The pressure was enormous: SMEs were too busy to help. No performance benchmarks existed. The biggest shopping season was approaching fast. So we started from scratch: 1. Used production data to identify real-world patterns 2. Focused on 4 critical workflows (like the gift card surge) 3. Built load and endurance tests around those flows 4. Partnered with developers to fix bottlenecks quickly 5. Created a live monitoring team to catch issues early The result? 1. Near five-nines availability 2. No major outages 3. And the QA Head got promoted The lesson: You don’t need perfect requirements. You need urgency, focus, and cross-functional action. If you’re heading into a risky season, ask yourself: What’s your most fragile revenue path? Do you know how it behaves under stress? Are you waiting for failure to tell you where to look? 📣 What would you do if you had 8 weeks to stop a million-pound mistake?

48-hour deployments. People hear that and think ‘risky.’ I see it as a competitive advantage. If you build a system that is robust, speed becomes your greatest strength. Our automated pipeline is built on this philosophy. We run over 200 test scenarios in under 10 minutes and use canary testing to catch issues before they reach all users. Blue-green deployments have helped us reduce release-related downtime by nearly 99%. Speed is more than just a pace for us, it's a core value. We embed trust at every stage - automated security scans in CI/CD, zero-trust principles for every change, and compliance checks built directly into the pipeline. No manual gates. When your pipeline has more safeguards than your manual process, you accelerate customer value delivery. So what does this mean for our merchants? Fast actually becomes safer than slow. What's your team's deployment cycle time? Are you optimizing for speed or safety?

Daily releases sound exciting - 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥 𝐛𝐮𝐠𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. . Then it’s chaos. Recently, I met a Y Combinator-backed startup founder. Their goal? Release features daily and stay ahead of the competition. The problem? Bugs in production. Here’s what happened: As they scaled up and started shipping daily, they struggled to write and execute test cases. Bugs leaked into production, and the damage was immediate: • Frustrated customers, dropped NPS/CSAT scores. • A reputation hit every time something broke. • Slowing down to fix bugs felt like losing momentum. • Trying to balance it all led to rising costs. They were caught in the classic trade-off: 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐝, 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐭—𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐰𝐨, 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭? But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s I shared my perspective in nutshell : 1. Shift left testing: Move QA earlier in the development cycle. Catch bugs during design or coding—it’s cheaper and prevents last-minute surprises. 2. Automate regression tests: A strong test suite ensures fixes don’t break existing features. 3. Use feature toggles: Roll out changes incrementally to catch issues early. 4. Focus on critical issues. Not every bug will hurt your customers. 5. Learn from feedback. Let users guide your priorities without losing focus. When you integrate testing early and automate regressions, you’re not just fixing bugs—you’re preventing them. Less firefighting, more time to build features that matter. How do you handle this balance in your projects? #ProductDevelopment #ShiftLeft #QA #Leadership