Setting things straight

Among the community of our users there are very high-voiced opinions about the quality of each release. Nothing strange about that, would be much weirder if they didn't care. However, there seems to be a tendency to always, ALWAYS, blame the testers when something doesn't work like it should (or maybe it works as intended, but it's not to their liking). Therefore I'd like to set some things straight:

1. The deadline.
We have a deadline for each release that has to be met. Usually, the Project Managers plan one week of testing (which, in my opinion isn't enough) but even if the developers fall behind our test week does not get extended, which means that we have to work miracles in order to test at least most of the things during just a few days.

2. Resources.
We are a small test department, very small. We also do not have all the different hardware setups we would like and therefore can't catch all hardware related issues that may appear. We are working on it though, trust me.

3. Go/No Go decision.
This one is important. I, as Test Lead, DO NOT decide whether a release is ready to be shipped or not! What I do is to give my recommendations and professional opinion regarding the current status of the release, it's then up to the Project Manager to decide whether to ship it or not. Believe me, my recommendations have been overlooked many, many times.

I'm not saying that our test department is perfect, not at all. I just want to point out that we do the best we can under the circumstances. I have an agenda to improve our test process, but it will take time. I'm not giving up yet though.