5 Questions Every VP of Engineering Should Ask Their QA Team Before 2026

Introduction: A New Compass for Quality

In strategy meetings, technology leaders often face the same paradox: despite heavy investments in automation and agile, delivery timelines remain shaky. Sprint goals are ticked off, yet release dates slip at the last minute because of quality concerns. The obvious blockers have been fixed, but some hidden friction persists.

The real issue usually isn’t lack of effort—it’s asking the wrong questions.

For years, success was measured by one number: “What percentage of our tests are automated?” That yardstick no longer tells the full story. To be ready for 2026, leaders need to ask tougher, more strategic questions that reveal the true health of their quality engineering ecosystem.

This piece outlines five such questions—conversation starters that can expose bottlenecks, guide investment, and help teams ship faster with greater confidence.

Question 1: How much of our engineering time is spent on test maintenance versus innovation?

This question gets right to the heart of efficiency. In many teams, highly skilled engineers spend more time babysitting fragile tests than designing coverage for new features. A small change in the UI can break dozens of tests, pulling engineers into a cycle of patching instead of innovating. Over time, this builds technical debt and wears down morale.

Why it matters: The balance between maintenance and innovation is the clearest signal of QA efficiency. If more hours go into fixing than creating, you’re running uphill. Studies show that in traditional setups, maintenance can swallow nearly half of an automation team’s time. That’s not just a QA headache—it’s a budget problem.

What to listen for: Strong teams don’t just accept this as inevitable. They’ll talk about using approaches like self-healing automation, where AI systems repair broken tests automatically, freeing engineers to focus on the hard, high-value work only people can do.

Question 2: How do we get one clear view of quality across Web, Mobile, and API?

A fragmented toolchain is one of the biggest sources of frustration for leaders. Reports from different teams often tell conflicting stories: the mobile app flags a bug, but the API dashboard says everything is fine. You’re left stitching reports together, without a straight answer to the question, “Is this release ready?”

Why it matters: Today’s users don’t care about silos. They care about a smooth, end-to-end experience. When tools and data are scattered, you end up with blind spots and incomplete information at the very moment you need clarity.

What to listen for: The best answer points to moving away from disconnected tools and toward a unified platform that gives you one “pane of glass” view. These platforms can follow a user’s journey across channels—say, from a mobile tap through to a backend API call—inside a single workflow. Analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester have already highlighted the growing importance of such consolidated, AI-augmented solutions.

Question 3: What’s our approach for testing AI features that don’t behave the same way twice?

This is where forward-looking teams stand out. As more companies weave generative AI and machine learning into their products, they’re realizing old test methods don’t cut it. Traditional automation assumes predictability. AI doesn’t always play by those rules.

Why it matters: AI is probabilistic. The same input can produce multiple valid outputs. That flexibility is the feature—not a bug. But if your test expects the exact same answer every time, it will fail constantly, drowning you in false alarms and hiding real risks.

What to listen for: Mature teams have a plan for what I call the “AI Testing Paradox.” They look for tools that can run in two modes:

• Exploratory Mode: letting AI test agents probe outputs, surfacing edge cases and variations.
• Regression Mode: locking in expected outcomes when stability is non-negotiable.

This balance is how you keep innovation moving without losing control.

Question 4: How fast can we get reliable feedback on a single code commit?

This question hits the daily pain point most developers feel. Too often, a commit goes in and feedback doesn’t come back until the nightly regression run—or worse, the next day. That delay kills momentum, forces context switching, and makes bugs far more expensive to fix.

Why it matters: The time from commit to feedback is a core DevOps health check. If feedback takes hours, productivity takes a hit. Developers end up waiting instead of creating, and small issues turn into bigger ones the longer they linger.

What to listen for: The gold standard is feedback in minutes, not hours. Modern teams get there with intelligent impact analysis—using AI-driven orchestration to identify which tests matter for a specific commit, and running only those. It’s the difference between sifting through a haystack and going straight for the needle.

Question 5: Is our toolchain helping us move faster—or slowing us down?

This is the big-picture question. Forget any single tool. What’s the net effect of your stack? A healthy toolchain is an accelerator—it reduces friction, speeds up releases, and amplifies the team’s best work. A bad one becomes an anchor, draining energy and resources.

Why it matters: Many teams unknowingly operate what’s been called a “QA Frankenstack”—a pile of tools bolted together that bleed money through maintenance, training, and integration costs. Instead of helping, it actively blocks agile and DevOps goals.

What to listen for: A forward-looking answer recognizes the problem and points toward unification. One emerging model is Agentic Orchestration—an intelligent core engine directing specialized AI agents across the quality lifecycle. Done right, it simplifies the mess, boosts efficiency, and makes QA a competitive advantage rather than a drag.

Conclusion: The Conversation is the Catalyst

These questions aren’t about pointing fingers—they’re about starting the right conversations. The metrics that defined QA for the last decade don’t prepare us for the decade ahead.

The future of quality engineering is in unified, autonomous, and AI-augmented platforms. Leaders who begin asking these questions today aren’t just troubleshooting their current process—they’re building the foundation for resilient, efficient, and innovative teams ready for 2026 and beyond.