How to Translate QA Gaps into Hiring and Process Decisions

You’ve identified your quality gaps. Now what?

Knowing what’s broken doesn’t automatically tell you how to fix it, and that’s the part where a lot of teams get stuck. So if you’re staring down a list of issues and wondering:

Do we need to hire someone?

Should we change how and/or what we test?

(Or maybe more honestly) How do we even fix this?

This post is here to help you translate those insights into action and make decisions about your QA team that are grounded, strategic, and actually doable.

Step 1: Prioritize What Matters Most

Ok, first: it’s normal to have a longer list of quality gaps than you can act on all at once. Breathe.

What often trips teams up at this stage isn’t the number of issues, but the lack of a framework for choosing what to focus on first. When everything feels urgent it’s easy to default to the loudest problem, the easiest fix, or whatever a stakeholder just pinged you about.

So before you jump into solutions, start by asking: What’s hurting your customers What’s slowing down your team or adding stress? What’s feasible to address right now? Actually rate each gap. The point isn’t to be precise, it’s to get aligned on what matters most right now. (I use a more structured framework for this and plan to share soon. Sign up for the newsletter if you want a copy when it’s ready.)

Pick your top one or two quality goals for the next 1–2 quarters. Not “improve quality” but something specific, tied to business outcomes, and measurable enough that you’ll know if you’re making progress. This will become your compass - a way to prioritize tradeoffs, explain your decisions, and stay focused when everything feels important.

Step 2: Choose the Right Kind of Support

Once you know what you’re aiming for, the next step is figuring out how to get there. Sometimes that means hiring. Sometimes it means evolving how your team works. Sometimes it’s about making space for an existing person to show up differently. There’s usually no single right answer. But, there’s a very good first question to ask: What kind of support will actually move us forward?

Below are a few common quality pain points and examples of the kinds of investments that can help, whether that’s headcount, process changes, or something else. This isn’t a checklist, just a starting point. I’ve got a longer version with more scenarios coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter if you’d like early access.

Step 3: Start Small, Make It Real

You don’t need to fix everything all at once. Please don’t try. One of the most common reasons I’ve seen smart quality efforts stall is that they start too big too soon and are rolled out without a clear path to adoption.

Start small. Iterate. Make it visible. Try making a change on one high-impact team. Pilot a new process with a single squad. See what works, share what you learn, and use that momentum to fuel the next step.

The best quality transformations I’ve seen weren’t driven by a well-thought-out 12-month roadmap. They happened one smart, well-supported step at a time with a team that cared enough to keep tweaking until things got better.

Wrapping Up

Translating insights into action is one of the hardest parts of quality leadership, and one of the most important. There’s no universal playbook to follow. Just a series of decisions based on what you know, what you need, and what your team can support.

And it matters, because how your team builds software directly affects how your product feels to users. How fast you can move. How confident you are when launch day rolls around.

So if you're in the midst of translating your quality needs into action, keep going, start small, and stay grounded in your goals.