This too is technical communication: on the other hand...

[Beth Agnew]

Creating a mutually beneficial relationship with QA is always top of my list
at a new company. I am usually the first (and sometimes ONLY) person to do
user testing on the product, something QA often does not have time or
resources to do thoroughly. My bugs-found stats rival or beat my QA
colleagues' and more importantly, they're things the user would see.
When I'm looking for people to test my manual, the QA folks are usually very
accommodating. 
--Beth

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+beth.agnew=senecac.on.ca at lists.techwr-l.com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+beth.agnew=senecac.on.ca at lists.techwr-l.com] On
Behalf Of Gordon McLean
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 3:11 AM

...

As for the role of Tech Writers in "QA", I've never worked with a test team
that didn't welcome our input. As both teams are, typically, learning new
functionality at around about the same time, the crossover of knowledge and
skills is hugely helpful. Of course I wouldn't claim to be a QA Engineer
even though I do 'test' the application, and they wouldn't claim to be Tech
Writers even though they do sometimes provide source content for the docs.