High Standards

I want the software done under my watch to be 99% there before the programmer turns if over to QA.  The developer is the person who understands the internals of the software - he has to be responsible that it works.
 
QA can then work with the software to bring it up to a very high level.
 
The idea of "just good enough" is sometimes the target for a project.  I find this leads to greatly increased development costs of the software going back and forth between the developers and QA.

QA

I have done QA on almost every project I have been on.  If I am not doing the day to day QA, the project still needs a final pass from me.  People like to do good work and I find almost total cooperation with high standards.
 
I do QA first of all from test scripts.  These are expanded versions of the use cases created earlier.  They note what data to enter and will go through different scenarios. Then there is testing of edge cases - the maximum and minimum values allowed - and then out of range values.
 
Finally, there is just entering random values to simulate untrained users - often the ones who can make a system fail.
 
If there are multiple pieces going together, generally they will be verified individually first and then as a group.