Should testers approve releases, or just report on tests?
- by Ernest Friedman-Hill
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.