Oleg Sadikov, co-founder and CEO of the software testing company DeviQA.
One does not simply forget the incident involving CrowdStrike in 2024. Eight and a half million systems crashed, which resulted in canceled flights, disrupted hospitals, frozen media and broken public services. Delta, the airline, allegedly lost $500 million in five days due to the cancellation of 7,000 flights.
The overall financial loss from the failure was estimated to be about $5 billion.
Not every software failure brings about such consequences. But it’s another reminder of how important software quality is.
I’m battling the idea that quality assurance is just bug-catching. It’s a discipline or hands-on knowledge of how to ensure software works as you need it to.
The cost of poor software quality is growing inexorably: CISQ’s report states it was $2.41 trillion in 2022.
On the contrary, QA investment impact goes beyond just proper functionality: less rework, shorter delivery cycles, increased customer trust and revenue growth.
Early QA reverses the money-wasting cycle. You don’t drain your resources, and you can earn more through better software quality, reputation and retention. Here is how.
Software failures cost you more than you think.
We don’t expect our rubbish to go away on its own or our dishes to do themselves. Why, then, do we expect to reduce software defects and improve quality without changing the way we test?
What I see regularly:
• Poor user experience equals customer churn. Provide one bad experience, and your customer is down to leave you. At least 32% of those surveyed by PwC stated that.
• The later the fix, the more it costs. There is a common tale that fixing a bug in production costs 100 times more than catching it during design. There’s no proof of this, but it definitely costs more.
• Vulnerabilities impact brand reputation. Critical weaknesses tarnish your brand … unless you just don’t have parity-powerful competitors. Like Google.
In a study of 39 enterprise codebases, low-quality code produced 15 times more defects, and it took significantly longer to resolve them.
Invest in quality; get better business outcomes.
Avoiding disasters and protecting reputation are not the only benefits of QA. It also creates sustainable competitive advantages with a compounding effect.
By catching bugs early, companies avoid multiplying costs and free engineers to focus on high-impact work, delivering long-term value. Integrated into CI/CD pipelines, QA accelerates delivery while maintaining stability, and automation—especially AI-powered—amplifies that value.
High-quality software also drives customer satisfaction and retention, while reliable performance builds trust, reduces support costs and fuels revenue growth and competitive edge.
Use these metrics to measure the impact of quality on your bottom line.
Clear metrics tie quality to value. Here are some.
• Customer Retention And LTV: Users have poor software experiences, and they leave. So, customer lifetime value (LTV) shows real satisfaction with your product. Excellent software quality equals low churn rates equals higher LTV.
• Reduction In Post‑Release Defects: Fewer production bugs mean less reactive support and rework. Monitor your support ticket volume, resolution time and escalation rates.
• User Satisfaction And Brand Reputation Metrics: NPS, CSAT and customer feedback trace how quality affects trust and word of mouth. Poor software quality shows up in App Store (and similar) ratings. Fun fact: Based on what I’ve seen, a drop from 4.5 to 4.0 stars can reduce download rates by 30%.
• Compliance Incident Reduction: Fewer vulnerabilities reduce the risk of fines, breaches and damage to brand credibility.
These strategies deliver measurable software quality ROI.
Below are the specific practices that can help you improve your software quality and clarify the QA investment impact.
1. Implement automated/autonomous testing.
Start with conditional automation (with pre-defined scripts) and gradually transition to autonomous testing (quality checks without human intervention). Launch a pilot in a single module, then scale.
Beginning with high-risk and high-frequency workflows can result in quick wins.
Make sure to continuously fine‑tune the AI testing tool, adapting it to changes in your strategy or flow.
2. Shift QA left.
Move the testing stage to as early an interaction as possible, even before design and coding. Early collaboration with QAEs reduces rework and bad consequences.
3. Build a culture of quality.
Make quality part of team rituals: standups, discussions and just the consideration of quality checks before actual coding. A simple calling out of one potential risk per day catalyzes shared responsibility.
4. Use real‑time analytics.
There are a lot of tools on the market that surface anomalies in performance, error rate or UX patterns in production. Leverage this proactive insight.
5. Balance manual and automated testing.
Use automation for regression and repetitive cases. Memorize the 70-20-10 rule: 70% automated regression testing, 20% automated integration testing and 10% strategic manual exploratory testing. The latter focuses on user experience and edge cases.
Follow these steps.
I believe an actionable list is the best way to wrap up this article. So, here are some business-proven steps to follow if you want to change the way you test:
• Treat software quality as a strategic business priority.
• Invest in QA talent and tools that allow proactive testing.
• Ensure close collaboration among QA, development and product teams.
• Set up and regularly review QA KPIs to understand the impact.
• Educate stakeholders on quality as a long‑term business multiplier.
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