in the classic model, most QA orgs were a useless appendage. partially by construction, but largely because QA gets squeezed out when dev is late (when does that happen?). they aren't folded in early, so they twiddle their thumbs doing 'test infrastructure' and 'test plans', until they finally get a code drop and a 48 hr schedule to sign off, which they are under extreme pressure to do.

but every once and a while you ran across a QA organization that actually had a deep understanding of the problem domain, and actually helped drive development. right there alongside dev the entire way. not only did they improve quality, but they actually saved everyone time.