QA Debt: The Silent Risk That Can Take Down Your Business

In engineering, we talk a lot about technical debt — the shortcuts and compromises made in code that pile up over time. But there’s another kind of debt that’s just as dangerous and far more invisible: QA debt.

QA debt is what happens when testing isn’t given the same attention as features, architecture, or performance. It’s the accumulation of missed edge cases, outdated test suites, incomplete automation, or skipped regression checks. On the surface, things still “work,” so the risk doesn’t feel urgent. But underneath, cracks are forming.

How QA Debt Accumulates Quietly

QA debt rarely appears all at once. Instead, it builds in the background through a series of small decisions:

• Skipping tests for speed: “We’ll write them later” turns into “We never did.”
• Unmaintained test suites: Outdated tests stop running or lose coverage as the product evolves.
• Limited environments: Testing only in staging or missing real-world conditions leaves blind spots.
• Inconsistent data: Test data doesn’t reflect production reality, masking potential failures.
• Manual testing reliance: Slow, inconsistent, and often skipped under deadline pressure.
• Speed over substance: In the pursuit of agility and faster releases, I’ve seen teams and even entire organizations prioritize “going agile” over building strong QA fundamentals. Agile practices without proper testing discipline don’t reduce risk — they often accelerate QA debt by pushing more untested code into production.

Each of these seems harmless in isolation. Together, they compound — like interest on a loan you forgot about.

The Tipping Point: When QA Debt Causes an Outage

The danger with QA debt is that it doesn’t matter until it does.

A seemingly minor API change ripples into an untested scenario. A regression slips past because automation coverage is outdated. A rare edge case in production data crashes the system.

Suddenly, what looked like a stable product is down. The root cause often traces back not to a single bug, but to years of accumulated testing shortcuts that left the door open for failure.

And the consequences go beyond engineering. In the past six months alone, I’ve seen several VPs of Engineering forced out after major incidents directly tied to quality gaps — outages that impacted revenue, eroded customer trust, and shook board confidence. When QA debt comes due, it doesn’t just break systems; it can derail careers and company momentum.

Paying Down QA Debt Early

The good news: QA debt is manageable if addressed proactively. Some proven strategies:

• Automate early and often: Automation testing is usually one of the easiest ways to start paying down QA debt. Even small amounts of automation added over time steadily improve coverage, catch regressions earlier, and build confidence with every release. Automate your CI pipeline as well to ensure tests run consistently and automatically with every change.
• Continuously review and refactor tests: Treat test code like production code.
• Use production-like environments and data: Reduce the gap between test and reality.
• Track QA debt like technical debt: Make it visible in planning and prioritize fixing it.
• Shift left: Involve QA thinking from the design stage, not just before release.

I’ve never met someone at a company who got let go because they did too many tests.

Final Thought

QA debt doesn’t make noise. It doesn’t break builds or slow features — until it does. And when it surfaces, the cost is often far higher than if it had been addressed early.

For example, imagine an ecommerce company that processes 500,000 orders per month with an average order size of $15. Losing just 1% of orders due to a system incident would mean:

500,000 \times 0.01 = 5,000 \text{ lost orders per month

5,000 x 15 = $75,000 lost revenue per month

Over a year, that adds up to:

$75,000 x 12 = $900,000 in lost revenue annually

A real-world example underscores this risk: In May 2025, Victoria’s Secret experienced a multi-day website outage during a Memorial Day sale.  The disruption affected digital sales, which accounted for about one-third of the company’s $6 billion total revenue. While the exact financial impact wasn’t disclosed, the incident led to a 6.8% drop in stock value and significant customer frustration.

Just like paying off a credit card before the interest explodes, investing in quality now prevents outages later. Teams that consistently pay down QA debt don’t just ship faster — they sleep better at night knowing their systems are built on a foundation that’s been truly tested.

Ignore it, and one day, your site will go dark, orders will vanish, and your customers won’t wait—they’ll never come back. When that happens, there’s no debugging that will save you.