The PO-as-QA trap: how small teams can escape testing debt

The familiar story

Here's a pattern I see in almost every small team:

Sprint planning happens. Stories get assigned. At the bottom of the board, there's an unwritten assumption: Sarah, the product owner, will test everything before it ships.

Sarah didn't ask for this role. Nobody explicitly assigned it. It just... happened. Early on, when the product was smaller, she'd click through new features before release. It took 20 minutes. Now the product has grown, and her "quick test" takes four hours—when she can find the time.

Most sprints, she can't find the time. Features ship with minimal validation. Bugs slip through. Customers report issues. Developers context-switch to firefight. The next sprint starts with less capacity and more technical debt.

This is the PO-as-QA trap, and it's suffocating small teams everywhere.

Why this happens

The trap emerges from reasonable decisions:

Early stage: "We don't need a QA person yet"

Seed-stage startups are right to stay lean. A dedicated QA hire before product-market fit often doesn't make sense. So the product owner, who knows the product best, tests features as they ship.

Growth stage: "We'll hire someone soon"

The product grows. Testing takes longer. The PO keeps doing it because hiring takes time, and features can't wait. "We'll hire a QA next quarter" becomes a recurring promise.

Scale stage: "It's too broken to fix now"

By now, testing debt has accumulated. The PO can't keep up. Features ship untested. Bug reports flood in. The team spends more time fixing issues than building new features. Velocity drops even as headcount grows.

According to Slido's engineering blog, they faced exactly this: "A lot of developers' energy was used to find and fix bugs and releases were delayed. Despite this, the company was growing fast, so building a QA platform was inevitable."

The key word is "inevitable." Small teams don't avoid this problem—they delay it while it compounds.

The real costs of PO-as-QA

Cost 1: Product strategy suffers

Product owners have a primary job: understanding users, defining what to build, and making strategic prioritization decisions. Testing is tactical verification.

When your PO spends hours clicking through regression scenarios, they're not:

• Talking to customers
• Analyzing usage data
• Refining the roadmap
• Working with stakeholders
• Making strategic decisions

You're paying senior-role salary for junior-task work. The opportunity cost is enormous.

Cost 2: Testing coverage shrinks

A PO testing in spare moments can't achieve systematic coverage. They test the happy path, maybe one or two edge cases, then move on.

What gets missed:

• Browser compatibility
• Mobile responsiveness
• Error handling paths
• Performance under load
• Integration edge cases
• Accessibility requirements

These gaps become bugs in production. Production bugs become customer complaints. Complaints become churn.

Cost 3: Cognitive switching destroys productivity

Testing requires a different mindset than product management. The PO must context-switch between:

• Strategic thinking → detailed verification
• Future planning → present-state validation
• User empathy → systematic destruction attempts

Each switch costs time and mental energy. Studies suggest 20-30 minutes to reach deep focus after an interruption. A PO constantly switching between roles never achieves deep work in either.

Cost 4: Quality becomes someone's "spare time"

When testing is nobody's primary job, it gets deprioritized. Important but not urgent loses to urgent every time.

The result: testing happens when convenient, not when necessary. Releases go out with whatever validation was possible given competing demands.

Why "just hire a QA" isn't always the answer

The obvious solution—hire a dedicated tester—isn't always feasible:

Budget constraints

A mid-level QA engineer costs $70,000-120,000+ annually (higher in major markets). Early-stage startups often can't justify this before product-market fit.

Hiring timeline

Finding good QA talent takes 2-6 months. Open roles sit unfilled while testing debt accumulates.

Scaling problem

One QA person supports roughly 4-6 developers sustainably. If you have 8 developers, you need 2 QA. The ratio scales linearly while developer output scales non-linearly with automation.

Integration challenges

A solo QA hire in a team of developers often struggles. They're outnumbered, under-supported, and can become a bottleneck rather than a force multiplier.

The sustainable path: shared ownership with clear boundaries

The alternative to "PO does QA" isn't "hire a QA person"—it's building quality into how your team works.

Step 1: Make developers own their quality

According to Rainforest QA's guide, one approach is having developers write and maintain their own tests:

"In addition to unit testing, they write and maintain their own E2E tests... This approach is easier on your budget than hiring a full-time specialist."

Developers should:

• Write unit tests for their code (non-negotiable)
• Verify their own changes work before code review
• Write integration tests for APIs they build
• Fix their own bugs before moving to new work

This doesn't eliminate the need for broader testing, but it catches 60-70% of issues before they reach anyone else.

Step 2: Define what the PO actually tests

The PO's testing role should be narrow and valuable:

This transforms "PO does QA" into "PO validates product intent"—a legitimate and valuable use of their expertise.

Step 3: Automate the repetitive parts

The testing that eats PO time is usually repetitive:

• Login works
• Core user flows function
• Key features haven't regressed
• Basic validation catches obvious errors

This is exactly what automation handles well. According to Testlio's QA best practices, automation should cover predictable, repeatable scenarios while humans focus on exploratory testing.

You don't need an SDET to automate. Modern tools offer:

• Low-code test builders
• AI-powered test generation
• Record-and-playback automation
• Self-healing tests that survive UI changes

Step 4: Reserve time for intentional testing

Whatever testing approach you choose, schedule it explicitly:

Option A: Testing time block Reserve 2-4 hours per sprint where the team (not just PO) does exploratory testing together. Everyone clicks around, tries to break things, logs issues.

Option B: Pre-release checklist Before each release, require sign-off on a defined checklist. Not "whoever has time" but explicit assignment and accountability.

Option C: Rotating responsibility Team members take turns owning release testing each sprint. Spreads the knowledge and prevents single-point-of-failure.

Building a testing culture without a QA team

CafetoSoftware's QA guide emphasizes that quality should be embedded throughout the organization:

"A successful QA for startups strategy requires a culture of quality embedded throughout the organization. Every team member, from engineers to designers, should share responsibility for product quality."

Here's how to build that culture:

Define quality standards explicitly

What does "done" mean? Write it down:

• Code is reviewed
• Unit tests pass
• Feature works on Chrome, Firefox, Safari
• Mobile responsive
• Acceptance criteria verified
• No console errors

If everyone knows the standards, everyone can enforce them.

Make bugs visible

When bugs reach production, don't just fix them quietly. Track where they came from:

• Which story introduced it?
• What testing would have caught it?
• Who was responsible for verification?

This isn't about blame—it's about learning. Patterns reveal process gaps.

Celebrate quality wins

When someone catches a significant bug before release, acknowledge it. When a sprint ships with zero production issues, note it. What gets celebrated gets repeated.

Give developers production context

Developers who never see production bugs undervalue testing. Give them visibility into:

• Customer support tickets
• Error logs and exception reports
• User session recordings showing frustration

When you see users struggling with bugs you could have prevented, testing becomes personal.

The escape plan: week by week

Week 1: Count hours PO spends testing. List what gets tested vs. what should be. Identify top 5 recurring bug categories.

Week 2: Require unit tests for new code (enforce in CI). Define "done" to include self-verification. Block PRs without coverage.

Week 3: Automate smoke tests for critical paths (login, core feature, key conversion). Run on every deploy.

Week 4: Document what PO tests (product intent only). Time-box to 30-60 minutes per feature max.

Ongoing: Add automation for each recurring bug pattern. Consider AI-powered tools. Revisit as team grows.

When to actually hire

At some point, dedicated QA does make sense:

Signs you've outgrown shared ownership:

• Team exceeds 8-10 engineers
• Product complexity makes manual verification impossible
• Regulatory requirements demand formal testing
• Customer base justifies investment in quality infrastructure
• Developer velocity suffers from testing overhead

What to hire for:

• QA engineer who can automate, not just click
• Someone who enables team quality, not gatekeeps releases
• Strategic thinker who improves process, not just executes tests

Frequently asked questions

Is it ever okay for the PO to do QA?

Yes, if it's intentional and bounded. PO-as-product-validator (does this solve the user problem?) is legitimate. PO-as-sole-quality-gate (verify everything works) is a trap.

How do we test without a QA person AND without burning out the PO?

Distribute the responsibility: developers test their own code, automation handles regression, PO validates product intent, and team shares exploratory testing. No single person carries the full burden.

Our developers say testing isn't their job. How do we change that?

Make it explicit: definition of done includes tests. Block deploys without verification. Show them the production bugs their code causes. Quality is everyone's job in a small team.

What if we can't afford any testing tools?

Start with free open-source options: Playwright/Cypress for E2E automation, GitHub Actions for CI. These require engineering investment but no tool budget.

How do we know if testing debt is really a problem for us?

Calculate: How many hours does your team spend on production bug fixes weekly? Multiply by average fully-loaded engineer cost. That's your testing debt interest payment. If it's significant, you have a problem.

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The PO-as-QA trap isn't inevitable. Small teams can build quality products without dedicated QA hires—if they approach testing as a team discipline rather than an individual burden.

The solution isn't working harder or hoping the PO finds more hours. It's working differently: developers owning their quality, automation handling the repetitive, and human attention focused where it adds the most value.

Your PO should spend time understanding users and shaping product direction—not clicking through the same regression scenarios every sprint.