We put significant effort into building out our QA pipelines to support regular software releases, yet we continuously hit roadblocks when we try to reconcile functional quality with security requirements. This friction is rarely just a matter of timing or tools. Even when security processes are introduced earlier in the development lifecycle, the underlying tension remains. We have built faster delivery pipelines, but we have failed to resolve the systemic conflict between the team testing functionality and the team defending the code.
The latest Sembi Software Quality Pulse Report highlights a fundamental paradox. Sixty-eight per cent of professionals agree that aligning QA and security would yield massive business value. Yet, thirty-one per cent point to conflicting priorities and KPIs as their primary roadblock, with another thirty per cent blaming organisational silos.
We have built an operational model that actively places our teams in opposition to one another.
Consider how we measure success. We evaluate the testing team on metrics like test execution throughput, automation targets, and functional coverage, whilst operationally squeezing them to meet rigid release dates. At the exact same time, we incentivise the security team on risk minimisation. They are judged on vulnerability counts and compliance adherence. For them, a delayed release is a minor inconvenience compared to a potential security breach.
How can we expect collaboration when we measure these teams on entirely separate dimensions of risk, leaving them to defend their own corners rather than the integrity of the release?
We are looking at a structural design failure rather than a lack of talent or goodwill. When we treat quality and security as separate, sequential tollgates, we create an environment where teams must choose between speed and safety. It is a false dichotomy, and ironically it is costing us both speed and safety.
Skeptics will raise the classic objections. The board will argue that separating the builders from the checkers is a vital control, much like separating accounting from audit. Engineering leaders will warn that shared metrics will be gamed, or that developers are already drowning in cognitive overload and security tool noise.
These are real operational hurdles, but they do not justify maintaining a broken status quo. Aligning incentives is not about asking developers to grade their own security homework, nor is it about forcing QA teams to triage the fifty-one per cent of security alerts that the Sembi report reveals are flat-out false positives. That is simply bad management.
Instead, aligned incentives force the organisation to share the burden of system friction. When security is held accountable for delivery impact, they are forced to tune their scanners, eliminate noise, and provide actionable engineering feedback. When delivery teams share accountability for security outcomes, they are incentivised to treat compliance as a standard of quality, rather than an external tax.
The path forward requires us to dismantle these contradictory incentives. We must establish shared metrics that govern secure delivery as a single, non-negotiable standard, measuring our teams on the volume of secure, functional code successfully running in production.
The logic is simple. If a release is insecure, it is not a quality release. Conversely, if a security control paralyses velocity, it is not a viable business process. One cannot exist without the other.
Until we align the incentives, DevSecOps evangelism simply cannot save us.
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