And I say this because I am FacelessCorp employee!
I think it’s obvious that testing must occur, whether it’s good and righteous TDD and automated Unit Testing, XP Paired Programming or just the developer banging on the app like a monkey.
But it’s my experience that unless the “test department” is closely managed and lives inside a mature process, that they typically provide limited value.
Not talking stress testing, configuration/deployment management or full environment testing. These are things (in my experience here at FaceLessCorp) that are not done well by the developer/programmer.
But unfortunately what a lot of QA groups return are “bugs” that are really them interpretting the original unclear requirements different that the developer, them imposing their own set of arbitrary standards, or them pointing out either merely obvious issues or completely corner bizarre issues.
None of which are completely valuable to me the developer.