There are test cases that can be automated. That's Jenkins, and those will be run automagically.

Then there are tests that cannot be automated; things like "Does the GUI look OK on all of the platforms that we support (Windows XP/2000/Vista/7/8, Ubuntu/Debian blah with window managers foo and bar, OSX 10.5/6/7/8)."

Thanks to Matt, we're doing great with automated functional test cases (can always do better, of course).

We're failing on simple, boring stuff like making sure we actually run on all of the platforms that we say we run on BEFORE final release. That is where I think a QA team can add a lot of value.

Steve: I'm worried you're over-designing The Process. A release acceptance test plan could be nothing more than a step-by-step checklist on a wiki page, Google Doc, or Drobox shared folder...

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Gavin Andresen