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QA and Testing

Practical guidance on software testing and QA process for engineering leaders who need releases to hold up under real use.

Latest in QA and Testing

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Hand-picked by our editors and refreshed quarterly.

About this category

This hub collects our writing on software testing: how teams structure QA process, what tools and techniques hold up in production, and where manual and automated testing each earn their place. It is written for engineering leaders who need to decide how much testing rigor a release actually requires, not for readers looking for a definitions glossary. Some pieces are conceptual, like the breakdown of test doubles in unit testing or the comparison of verification against validation. Others are operational, including how to handle bug severity and priority when a backlog is growing faster than the team can triage it.

If you are staffing a QA function or deciding whether to build one internally, we can help with quality assurance outsourcing that plugs experienced testers into your existing sprint cycle. Teams that already have engineers but lack senior QA judgement often bring in QA staff augmentation to cover a release crunch or a product launch without a long hiring cycle. For organisations rethinking their whole approach to release quality, we also scope software testing services that cover strategy, automation, and execution together.

The articles here also address the people side of QA, including what to look for when hiring QA engineers, and the practical side of process design, such as running user acceptance testing without stalling a release. For a broader view of how a QA function should be structured before you dive into individual techniques, the subcategories below group articles by process versus tooling, which tends to match how most engineering leaders actually think about the problem.

If you are new to this hub and trying to decide where to start, begin with the piece on verification against validation, since it frames the distinction that most later process decisions depend on. From there, the severity and priority article helps with the recurring decision of what to fix now versus what to log and revisit once the release has shipped.

Frequently asked questions

  • How much software testing does a small engineering team actually need?

    It depends on release frequency and blast radius, not team size. A team shipping weekly to production needs enough automated regression coverage to catch breakage fast, plus manual checks on anything touching payments, auth, or data integrity. Skipping structured QA process early is common, but it gets expensive once the codebase and user base both grow past what a founder can manually verify.

  • Should we build an in-house QA team or outsource testing?

    Most teams outsource QA when the work is steady but doesn’t justify a full-time hire yet, or when a launch needs coverage faster than hiring allows. In-house QA makes more sense once testing needs deep product context that’s expensive to hand off repeatedly. Many teams run a hybrid, keeping a lead QA engineer internal and covering execution through outsourcing.

  • What's the difference between QA and software testing?

    Software testing is the activity of executing test cases and finding defects. QA is the broader process that includes testing but also covers requirements review, standards, process design, and prevention. A mature QA process treats testing as one control among several, alongside code review, static analysis, and clear acceptance criteria defined before development starts.

  • How do we know if our QA process is actually working?

    Track escaped defects, the bugs found in production rather than before release, as your primary signal. A healthy QA process shows escaped defects trending down while release frequency holds steady or increases. If teams are shipping fast but production incidents keep climbing, the process has gaps somewhere between requirements and test coverage, not just missing test cases.

  • Where do we start if we've never had a formal QA process?

    Start with the highest-risk paths in your product, the ones where a bug causes real damage, and build test coverage there first. Add manual acceptance testing before releases while automation catches up. Bring in outside QA expertise short-term if nobody on the team has run a formal process before; it’s faster than learning by trial and error in production.

  • How does testing fit with our broader engineering and delivery setup?

    Testing doesn’t sit in isolation from how you build or ship software. For the process and strategy side, see our QA Process and Strategy hub, and for tooling and pipelines, our Test Automation hub. Broader delivery topics, including CI/CD and team structure, live in Cloud and DevOps and Outsourcing and Engineering Teams.