Test By Releasing

Release a software (to the market or to the testing group doing system level testing) without bothering about Unit/Integration/Functional testing. Motto "Let the users find bugs." We will fix all user detected defects and no more. On the face of it you save testing costs and fixing other defects that could have been found/reported by the testers. Of course it disregards the loss of 'FACE' and consequent loss of 'Money'

On the other hand...

If you can get a committed bunch of people together, and instill some kind of feeling of elitism; you can call them beta testers, and they'll be happy to do your testing for you.

Make it clear to them that they're getting the bleeding-edge releases that probably won't work, and release often. It helps people think that they have some input into your development process, and increases user buy-in.

Perhaps this should be written as a proper pattern? Three examples, anyone?