> QA usually needs someone strong to protect the team, as they’re the ones who most frequently get asked to make up for cost/scope/schedule/quality problems tha

> QA usually needs someone strong to protect the team, as they’re the ones who most frequently get asked to make up for cost/scope/schedule/quality problems that others caused Bingo. That combined with the odd guy from a completely different department coming over and singling me out for help (at the time, we were the team pushing the envelope with what was possible on the web). That being said, (a) Margaret always offered our team's help to other teams, and we frequently spent large blocks of time assisting with outside projects. But there was so much demand for us that she had to insist they go through her first; and (b) of course we could answer people's questions and assist them for a few minutes here and there. I'm talking about requests like "hey could you do this work for me", where it ends up taking several hours or more. My point, though, was that she protected us from outside demands so we could stay really productive.