Test Wars - Episode I: The Rise of Technical Debt
TL;DR: The way you built quality before PMF (product market fit) will likely become a massive bottleneck after. Neglecting QA while you are quickly iterating on the fundamentals of your product is the right thing to do, but it will lead to costly technical debt, slower releases, and firefighting instead of building if you keep on that path. Proactive, scalable QA should be seen as the fuel for sustainable growth in a customer centric startup.
You've done it. You've navigated the chaos, built something users love, and found that elusive product-market fit. The engine's roaring, and it's time to scale. You're hiring engineers, adding features, and expanding your user base.
Guess what? What got you here, won't get you there!
The rapid build-and-ship cycle common before product-market fit often leaves behind a hidden cost: technical debt. And a massive piece of that debt comes from deferred or inadequate QA.
As you scale your engineering team from that initial <10 up towards 20 or even 50 engineers, this debt starts to collect interest – and you're paying it with developer time, slower feature velocity, and stressful firefighting. If you continue down this route, soon you'll be having conversations about bringing in expensive talent, instead of focusing on what you want the most: incredible high-quality user experiences.
From sporadic to scheduled
What worked with a small team and a simpler product – those early days where you would do the manual testing yourself, or trusting your amazing developers to do ad-hoc checks – becomes a critical bottleneck as complexity explodes and your release cadence increases.
Here's the harsh reality, backed by data:
More features, more code, more time
As your codebase grows and ages, the technical debt from rushed decisions and insufficient testing during the early days consumes a huge chunk of your engineers' time. Reports show engineering teams can spend anywhere from 23% to 42% of their time dealing with technical debt and quality issues instead of building new features. That's nearly half your valuable engineering resources tied up fixing past problems!
Bugs go from the expected to relationship killers
If your customers are paying, and now you are a buzz word, your brand is on the line. The later you find a bug, the more it will cost, as more users will be exposed to it for more time... and now you have many users! It's a rule of software development. Finding a bug in production can be 30 to 100 times more expensive than if you'd caught it during the design phase. As you scale and release faster, more bugs will slip through if your QA isn't scaling with you, leading to costly, late-stage fixes and damage to your reputation.
More people, more opinions, more drama
Relying heavily on manual testing simply doesn't scale with the speed and complexity required post-PMF. Manual processes are slow and prone to human error, especially for repetitive tasks like regression testing. As you aim for more frequent releases (weekly, bi-weekly are common goals), manual regression cycles become impossible bottlenecks, directly impeding your CI/CD pipeline and release velocity. The data shows that many companies start shifting to automated End-to-End (E2E) testing around the 6-10 developer mark precisely because manual testing can't keep up.
Quality should become your Growth Accelerator
Thinking of QA as just a final "check box" before shipping is fundamentally flawed, especially when you're scaling. Proactive, strategic QA transforms from a perceived cost or gatekeeper into a powerful enabler of faster, more reliable growth.
You need to be
Doing faster, frequent, and "small" releases
The only way to keep small releases is by doing constant releases. That is only possible by integrating QA early ("Shift Left") and automating checks builds confidence, reduces rework, and leads to predictable, rapid releases This will result in improved DORA metrics for deployment frequency and change lead time, while also improving stability.
Cost effective
Catching bugs early saves significant money downstream. Plus, efficient QA reduces wasted developer time and operational overhead. Even managing "flaky tests" – those unreliable tests that pass or fail randomly – costs valuable developer time that could be saved with better automation.
Better, with top product quality & user satisfaction:
Fewer bugs mean happier users, higher retention, and reduced support costs. Quality builds trust and can even be a competitive differentiator.
So, how can you scale effectively?
Retrofitting a robust QA process reactively when you're already scaling fast is tough. It's like trying to build a new engine while driving on the highway. It often leads to tool chaos, cultural friction, and still doesn't fully address the accumulated debt.
The key is to be proactive and strategic as you grow into that 10-50 engineer phase:
Shift Left
Embed quality thinking throughout your development process, not just at the end. Involve QA (or a QA mindset) in planning and design.
Automate Strategically
Developers should own unit tests. Invest in automated E2E tests for your critical, stable workflows as soon as manual regression starts feeling painful (again, often around 6-10 developers). Integrate these into your CI/CD pipeline.
Consider External Expertise & Low/no-code Tools
You shouldn't focus your team on building in-house immediately. This would be a distraction in your road to deliver critical functionality for your customers. Instead look for tools that specialize in what bottlenecks you see the most, especially those that are low/no-code. Those usually are the ones leveraging AI to help with the most painful part: test maintenance and self-healing. Platforms likeLambdaTest and BrowserStackoffer extensive cloud infrastructure for running tests. Tools like Rainforest QA or Momentic.ai focus on no-code/low-code and AI-driven maintenance reduction. Evaluating these can accelerate your QA maturity journey. If you also need a team of experts that have gone through this, and can support you through this learning journey instead. Then desplega.ai is your option. It will go beyond simply providing automatization, but help you execute on a clear CI/CD strategy.
Foster a Culture of Quality
Make quality everyone's responsibility, not just a single person or team. Leadership needs to champion quality as a core value.
Hitting product-market fit is a monumental achievement. But the journey doesn't get easier; the challenges just change. Ensuring your QA scales effectively with your growth is crucial to converting that initial traction into lasting, sustainable success without being crushed by technical debt or slowed down by quality bottlenecks.
Don't let the engine you built for launch become the anchor that prevents you from soaring.