Should testers approve releases, or just report on tests?

Posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Ernest Friedman-Hill
Published on 2013-07-01T14:55:30Z Indexed on 2013/07/01 16:28 UTC
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testing

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release-management

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process

Does it make sense to give signoff authority to testers? Should a test team

Just test features, issues, etc, and simply report on a pass/fail basis, leaving it up to others to act on those results, or
Have authority to hold up releases themselves based on those results?

In other words, should testers be required to actually sign off on releases? The testing team I'm working with feels that they do, and we're having an issue with this because of "testing scope creep" -- the refusal to approve releases is sometimes based on issues explicitly not addressed by the release in question.

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