← All roles

QA Lead / Test Manager

The tests pass. Do they test the hypothesis?

How Value Erosion shows up for you

For a QA Lead, Value Erosion is a test strategy that proves the software works and says nothing about whether it was worth building. Coverage grows, defects are caught, and a release can be fully green while the behavior it was meant to change in users never happens. Quality is measured at the code boundary, not at the outcome boundary.

Three questions to ask before building

  1. 1

    Which acceptance test, if it failed in production, would tell us the hypothesis is wrong rather than the code?

  2. 2

    What instrumentation must exist at release so we can check the outcome, and who verifies it?

  3. 3

    Where are we spending test effort on low-risk, low-value behavior while the riskiest assumption has no check at all?

The first 15 minutes

Add one hypothesis check to your next test plan

  1. Take the next release test plan and ask the Product Owner for the metric the release should move.
  2. Add one verification item: the event, log or report that shows the metric after release.
  3. Include it in your release checklist as a go-live condition, not as a follow-up.

Start here

Run the diagnostic

Five questions tailored to your role.

Prompts for your role

Copy-paste prompts framed around outcomes.

Claude skills

See how each skill applies to your seat.

Templates

Free templates picked for your role.

Work it through with the Assistant

A thinking partner for a real project from your role.