Joel Spolsky‘s December article for Inc has a wonderful line in it about management’s role.

… management’s job is to get things out of the way so that all the great people we’ve hired can get work done.

This is exactly how I see management’s role and how I run departments. When I actually had people who reported up to me my role was entirely to get things out of their way. My goal for actual testing (from my boss) was 8 hours per week. The rest of the time was meetings, strategy, etc. I think we were pretty effective in our roles there with high quality releases on time (or sooner).

I have also been in situations where management felt their role was to dictate and control my every move. I wasn’t able to be as effective as I could have been otherwise and it wasn’t much fun. I left.

A tester’s role is to provide quality related information to the stakeholders. A manager’s role is to create an environment they can do it in.