Our approach - in a much smaller company - is that all stories should have automated tests before they head off to QA. QA's job is to make sure that the story i

Our approach - in a much smaller company - is that all stories should have automated tests before they head off to QA. QA's job is to make sure that the story in question works correctly, it's not to find regression bugs. If QA finds a bug in the story, we write a test to catch that before we resubmit it. Over time, we have enough tests at all levels of the system that QA doesn't generally need to worry about regressions: just making sure that the latest story works as advertised. This approach allows us to stay agile, with small, regular releases, while also making good use of what QA folks are actually good at.