Releasing software without extensive quality assurance testing is asking for trouble. Poorly-designed software, bugs, or miserable UX dooms even the best projects – and with today’s hyper-intensive and rapid development cycles, things are sure to slip through the cracks. You can’t skimp on software testing, but planning your 2023 QA budget may feel tighter than normal amidst fears of a recession, inflation, and the global economy.

After working in UX for many years across several companies, I can confidently say this: usability testing is always a fragile issue. Companies expect their product to be exceptional and deliver value to their customers but believe that user experience testing is a time/cost sink. I’ve heard the claim (countless times) that user experience testing limits and prevents dev teams from pushing new products and features.

Developing high-quality apps involves pressure to make tradeoffs on speed, quality, and features to meet deadlines for release. This tension between speed and quality comes to a head with QA: you need a functional product but can’t afford weeks of turnaround time. You can’t skip QA: the true cost of software bugs – the direct cost of mitigating the defects and the indirect cost of decreased consumer trust – is extraordinary.