Salesforce QA Strategy: What Most Teams Get Wrong
A solid Salesforce QA strategy often looks fine on paper.
There are test classes. There’s code coverage. There are UAT scenarios that aim to validate key flows.
But even with all that in place, things still break and users get frustrated, and teams get blindsided: thus suffering User adoption.
It’s rarely about people not caring. Most teams genuinely want to build something solid.
The issue is that Salesforce isn’t like most platforms, and when teams apply generic test strategies to something this layered, they end up covering code but not covering risk.
Salesforce is not just another backend
It looks like code, but it behaves like a platform. Salesforce is built from metadata, flows, Apex logic, permission sets, third-party packages, and declarative automation. All of it is stitched together and constantly changing.
You’re testing whether a flow works.
What happens when a user doesn’t have the right permission.
And how a managed package update might break a trigger you didn’t write. And on top tof that, you’re doing it all in an environment where a small change in one place can ripple unpredictably through the rest.
Most strategies don’t account for that, they focus on code because it’s measurable, but the real risks usually live somewhere else.
What breaks most QA strategies
A few patterns tend to show up across nearly every team I work with.
They write unit tests because Salesforce requires them: 75% Code Coverage is the mandatory threshold for deployment.
But that number ends up driving the behavior; coverage becomes the goal, and confidence takes a back seat.
Flows are often deployed without ever being validated from an end-user perspective.
Tests are run using elevated permissions and pass for reasons that don’t hold in production.
Managed packages are assumed to work without testing them in your actual org setup.
And the same test data is recycled over and over, masking problems rather than revealing them.
On paper, it looks like progress; in practice, things still fall apart under real conditions.
What good looks like
Testing well in Salesforce doesn’t start after the build.
It starts much earlier, in refinement, in story design, in conversations about how something should behave and who will be using it.
Good QA isn’t just about verifying outcomes.
It’s about exploring what might break, what isn’t clear, and what assumptions are baked into the flow before it even exists. Most teams don’t build their Salesforce QA strategy early enough to influence real outcomes.
The teams that do this well bring QA in while ideas are still flexible.
They don’t wait for the sprint to end. They invite testers into the thinking, not just the testing.
And they ask different questions.
What if a record is locked?
What if the flow fails silently?
What happens when a junior profile hits a page built for a senior admin?
This isn’t about slowing things down.
It’s about shifting insight to where it can still change the outcome.
If you’re just starting out or want a refresher, Salesforce offers a solid Trailhead module on testing that covers the basics from their side.
The goal is not perfection. It is trust.
There’s no such thing as perfect coverage. But there is such a thing as confidence.
Confidence that what’s working in a sandbox will hold up in production.
Confidence that users won’t get blocked or confused by a permission issue no one noticed.
Confidence that automation won’t silently override something important, just because no one tested that interaction.
And that kind of confidence doesn’t come from a number.
It comes from awareness, alignment, and timing.
When QA is involved early, when testing reflects how the system will actually be used, and when risk is surfaced before release, that’s when trust is built.
And trust is the outcome we’re all trying to get to.
What we’ve seen work
At Springburst, we’ve worked with ISVs, internal dev teams, consultancies, and product orgs.
Some teams built test suites that looked strong on paper but failed in practice.
Others had just enough testing to stay light but still delivered with confidence.
The difference wasn’t tooling.
It wasn’t budget or headcount.
It was how early they started asking questions.
The best teams didn’t wait for QA to verify what was done: they used QA to help shape what should be done. Mapped out where things could go wrong, and made time to test those paths, not just the happy ones.
And because they did that early, they avoided surprises later. Not just technical ones, but human ones. Because no one wants to be the team that delivers something functional, but unusable.
That’s the shift
Not from manual to automated.
Not from bugs to coverage.
From late feedback to early insight.
From fixing after the fact to shaping what happens next.
From checking a box to cultivating quality with intention.
If you’re not sure where your QA strategy stands, a simple QA assessment can help.
Not to audit you or score you.
But to give you a clear picture of where you are, and where you can do better, faster. A good Salesforce QA strategy reduces risk, builds trust, and supports teams beyond the numbers.
That’s how we approach it at Springburst.
We test for confidence.
To reduce risk.
To make the team stronger.
That’s what a real QA strategy is for.
Want to see how this kind of QA strategy works in practice, or how it applies to testing for AI and Agentforce?
Explore our Salesforce QA services or get in touch to talk through your setup.