6.7Building Trust Across Functions

Trust is built through consistency, competence, and respect.

With Product Managers

• Deliver on your commitments (testing timelines, bug triages)
• Understand their priorities and constraints
• Be a partner in quality, not an obstacle to delivery

With Developers

• Write high-quality bug reports and reviews
• Acknowledge good work, not just bugs
• Contribute technically (automation, pipeline improvements, code reviews)

With Designers

• Respect their vision while validating the implementation
• Learn their tools and vocabulary
• Provide precise, actionable feedback

With DevOps

• Understand infrastructure constraints before making requests
• Contribute to pipeline improvements, not just consume them
• Share ownership of test environment health

With Support

• Respond quickly to customer-reported issues
• Keep the known issues list current
• Close the loop: "The bug you reported is fixed in v3.2.1"

The Trust Compound Effect

Sprint 1:  "Who is this QA person asking all these questions?"
Sprint 5:  "Let's include QA in the design review."
Sprint 10: "QA, what do you think about this architecture?"
Sprint 20: "We can't make this decision without QA's input."

Trust takes time to build and seconds to destroy. Every interaction is an opportunity.