А CTO asked: “Why is everyone obsessed on early QA? A bug is a bug… We’ll fix it anyway.”
Same bug. Same root cause. Completely different outcomes.
- Bug found in Development $1
A quick fix. Minimal disruption. Almost invisible.
- Bug found in Testing $10
Some rework, a few retests. Still works.
- Bug found in UAT $100
More teams are involved. Timelines start slipping.
- Bug found in Production $1000+
Hotfixes. Downtime. Support tickets. Angry users. Lost trust.
This is where bugs stop being “technical issues” and become “business risks”.
And this is why mature product teams don’t ask: “Do we need QA?”
They ask: “How early can QA get involved?”
Strong QA is about keeping bugs small, cheap, and forgettable.