There are a bunch of different issues to be parsed out here: First and foremost, I think what this comes down to is understanding the priorities for your parti

There are a bunch of different issues to be parsed out here: First and foremost, I think what this comes down to is understanding the priorities for your particular organization. There are some places where a high test:dev ratio may be critical e.g. the core pieces of a new OS or firmware for factory robots. For things like that, there is a really high cost to rolling out updates and that cost can be mitigated by paying for a second look at quality up front. For a consumer-facing web app, the cost of making a fix is often pretty low and can be mitigated by other means e.g. limited rollouts or beta previews. I think the real problem is treating various pieces of software in the same way, when in fact the fundamentals of the model are quite different. This also applies to using the same metrics (be that coverage, test pass time etc.) on each project. You have to find what works for you and not assume that the problem can be solved the same way. Second, it's not fair to go easy on the quality of test/QA folks. This is where a lot of organizations that actually invest in dedicated testers fail. Testers must be held to a similar bar as developers, just with a different functional role. As others have pointed out, the disbalance that widely varying talent levels cause in organizational health is quite disastrous. It's the same as any other piece of hiring. Make sure you have the right person for the job. That almost always means someone who knows computers/code/workflow/users at the same level as developers or product managers. Finally, as a former Windows engineer, I don't agree with the narrative that the Vista fiasco was a result of over-automation and not enough end-user scenario testing. It was more a problem of poor processes that couldn't handle the scale of the team and a lack of clear planning/leadership to account for that. Windows 7 had, if anything, more automation and more testers than Vista and was obviously a much better product. A lot of things have to go wrong to get something as ugly as the Longhorn Reset (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista#Mid-2004_to_Mid-2005:_Development_.22reset.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista#Mi...) and the one that OP pointed out was likely one of many.