Should QA exist?

This post examines whether QA teams should exist in engineering organizations, presenting arguments on both sides and offering practical recommendations.

• •Arguments against QA include slowing velocity through gated handoffs, creating moral hazard where engineers avoid owning quality, and poor incentives that cause QA to flag issues regardless of importance
• •Arguments for QA include testing being a specialized skill, automated tests being high-leverage and cost-effective, and some high-stakes situations genuinely requiring expert QA
• •The testing pyramid framework places unit tests at the base, with integration and UI tests above; QA ownership typically applies to end-to-end UI testing
• •If QA exists, it should be embedded on teams (shift left), eliminate handoffs, focus on automation, and have engineering still own quality with QA acting as quality experts