I agree. My current project was turning into a bit of death march (due to a number factors), and I was finding motivation hard to come by. My manager decided that we would begin doing "pre-releases" to QC in order to give them a chance to kick the tires before writing all their test cases. This has been a huge help to my motivation. Now our goals are "get these bits of functionality into the weekly build" instead of "get this massive app done by the end of the quarter."