Economy of Trust
Independent QA research

What does low trust really cost a QA team?

QA work depends on trust every day. QA engineers raise risks, report defects, challenge assumptions, and help teams make better product decisions. When trust is low, that work can become slower, more defensive, and more expensive.

We’re researching how trust affects the way QA teams work: and whether the hidden cost of low trust can actually be measured.

Participate in the research See what we’re studying

For QA leads, QA engineers, engineering managers, and software teams. The questionnaire takes approximately 20 minutes. Participation also includes collecting Jira metrics; the time needed depends on your setup.

What are we studying?

How trust shows up in everyday quality work.

We’re looking for practical signals of trust and low trust and how does it impact decision making, resolving issues, delegating responsibility, verifying quality, adopting automation and AI, and deciding when evidence is enough.

01

Do issues bounce between QA and development before they get resolved?

02

Does low trust lead to more rework or escaped defects?

03

Can this hidden friction: the “trust tax”: be measured using real team data?

Our goal is to connect something that can feel abstract: trust - with practical signals teams can recognize, discuss, and improve.
Why participate?

Help turn hidden friction into something teams can work with.

Your contribution will help us develop a Trust Tax Index: a practical way to understand the hidden cost of low trust in QA teams.

Where the findings go

Shared with the QA and software engineering community through a research paper, conference talks, and practical guidance for teams.

Your data

We are studying teams, not scoring people.

The goal of this research is to understand how trust affects the way teams work. Data will be analysed at the team level.

Individual names and personal performance data will not be published.
The research is designed to identify patterns in team systems and ways of working.
Participation helps us test whether “trust tax” can be connected to practical QA signals.
Who can participate?

People with first-hand experience of QA team dynamics.

We’d especially like to hear from people who see how QA and development teams work together, how quality decisions are made, and where trust helps or slows the work.

Participants may work in startups, scale-ups, enterprises, software companies, agencies, or technology teams inside non-software organizations.

QA Team Leads QA Engineers QA Managers Heads of QA Test Managers Quality Engineering Managers Directors of Quality Engineering Engineering Managers Engineering Leaders managing QA/testing
Research supported by Qase

Independent research, supported by industry.

This independent research is supported by Qase.

Economy of Trust

Help us uncover the hidden cost of low trust.

Better trust is not just about how work feels. It may affect how quickly teams resolve problems, how much coordination work they create, and ultimately the quality of the software they ship.

Participate in the research