5 QA Mistakes Small Businesses Make (and How to Avoid Them)
For many small businesses and start-ups, software quality often feels like a luxury. With limited budgets and small teams, it’s tempting to leave quality assurance (QA) until later — or to rely only on testing at the end. But skipping QA can lead to costly bugs, missed deadlines, and frustrated customers.
Here are the five most common QA mistakes small businesses make — and how to avoid them.
1. Treating QA as “Just Testing”
The mistake: Many teams think QA = testing. They run a few manual checks right before release and call it done. The problem? By that point, the software is already built — and fixing issues is expensive.
Example: When the U.S. government launched Healthcare.gov in 2013, last-minute testing revealed massive performance issues. Millions of users couldn’t sign up for healthcare on launch day. A proper QA process starting from requirements would have prevented this.
How to avoid it: Involve QA from the start. Think of QA as a mindset — building quality into requirements, design, coding, and deployment — not just a box-ticking exercise at the end.
2. Skipping Requirements QA
The mistake: Rushing straight into development without defining clear, testable requirements. Developers build what they think is needed, but not what the customer actually wanted.
Example: A Melbourne-based start-up I helped had to re-engineer their payment flow twice because requirements were vague. The rework delayed their release by two months and doubled their costs.
How to avoid it: Document requirements in plain language and review them with your team before coding starts. Define “what good looks like” early. This prevents defects before they exist.
3. Ignoring Automation Opportunities
The mistake: Relying only on manual testing. While manual testing is important, repeating the same checks for every release slows teams down and increases the chance of human error.
Example: Knight Capital (2012) lost $440 million in 45 minutes due to a deployment error. An automated regression test could have flagged the legacy code problem before it went live.
How to avoid it: Start small with automation. Even a handful of automated tests around critical features (login, payments, key workflows) can save hours and prevent major defects.
4. Not Testing in Real-World Conditions
The mistake: Testing only in ideal, “happy path” scenarios. This misses edge cases like high user loads, poor internet connections, or mobile device quirks.
Example: A small e-commerce business I advised launched with a checkout system that worked fine on desktops but broke on mobile Safari. They lost thousands in potential revenue before fixing it.
How to avoid it: Test in conditions that reflect how your users actually interact with your product — multiple devices, browsers, network speeds, and load levels.
5. Believing QA Is “Too Expensive”
The mistake: Many small businesses skip QA thinking it saves money. In reality, the opposite is true — fixing a bug after release can cost up to 30x more than preventing it during development.
Example: RBS/NatWest Bank (2012) suffered a major IT outage after a routine software update corrupted customer accounts. They were fined millions, not counting reputational damage. For a small business, even a single week of downtime could be fatal.
How to avoid it: See QA as an investment, not a cost. Even a lightweight QA process — requirements review, targeted automation, real-world testing — will save money in the long run and protect your reputation.
Key Takeaways
Small businesses don’t need a huge QA department — but they do need a quality mindset. By avoiding these five mistakes, you’ll:
- Save time and money on rework.
- Deliver faster, cleaner releases.
- Build customer trust with reliable software.
👉 At QAPhase, I help start-ups and lean teams build simple, scalable QA strategies without the cost of a full-time QA team. Contact me If you’d like to explore how I can help your business avoid these mistakes.