Define and Verify Product Ship Criteria

As the test manager, we have an opportunity to negotiate the criteria with marketing and the development groups. You want to verify criteria with customers or representatives of the customer. The development group's job is to figure out how to achieve what the company wants to achieve. Using the customer requirements to figure out what to do provides the developers a complete view of the product and how it works. Once the product is defined in terms of what and how, the testing effort can verify how well the product meets the real requirements.
It's important for testers to prioritize their testing so that the product ship criteria can be met. Since very few projects have enough time to do everything, getting the testers enough information for what and when to test is a very important role for the test manager.
Corporate managers need to understand the product ship criteria enough to be able to judge whether the product is ready to ship at a given date. I don't believe the test group should be either the holder of product approval or rejection-that role belongs to corporate management. Having pre-negotiated, agreed-upon ship criteria helps corporate managers judge for themselves whether or not a product is ready to ship. Pre-negotiated criteria helps the project team decide what product quality is when one no one is stressed from the project work.