It’s very context sensitive. 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.
In other casss, being too standoffish causes local optimization (“look how efficient my team is!”) at the expense of the broader org.
> 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.
In other casss, being too standoffish causes local optimization (“look how efficient my team is!”) at the expense of the broader org.