[ctb9]

It sounds like your QA team believes their purpose is to test that basic functionality is working as intended. This puts the focus on "checking the boxes" and not exploring edge cases or applying their deep knowledge of your product to try to find shortcomings.

I strongly believe that automating the repetitive and mindless aspects of the QA process is the crucial step to shifting their attitude. Automated UI tests can give everyone confidence within minutes that core functionality has not regressed. This allows the QA team to dive into a product or feature in a creative way and do their best to find the rough edges and help make the product better.

I have a consulting practice exclusively dedicated to helping startups with this very process: http://structurehq.com