testing Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Prabhleen Kaur: How AI Is Changing the Way Agile Teams Deliver Value

“AI’s output is not the final output—it’s always the two eyes we have that will get us the best results.” – Prabhleen Kaur

Prabhleen brings a timely challenge to the coaching conversation: the impact of AI on teams and how Scrum Masters should navigate this transformation. She frames it as both a challenge and an opportunity—teams are now capable of delivering faster than consumers can absorb, fundamentally changing expectations and dynamics.

Prabhleen has observed her teams evolve from uncertainty about AI to confidently leveraging it for practical benefits. Developers use AI for writing and understanding code, particularly helpful for onboarding new team members who need to comprehend existing codebases quickly. QA professionals find AI invaluable for generating test cases based on story and epic context already captured in JIRA.

The next frontier? Agentic AI, where AI systems communicate with each other to produce better outputs. But Prabhleen offers an important caution: AI is learning from many conversations, not all of which are reliable. The human element—critical thinking and verification—remains essential.

For Scrum Masters, this means facilitating conversations about how teams want to experiment with AI, exploring edge cases in testing that AI can help identify, and helping teams navigate the evolving landscape of possibilities while maintaining quality and judgment.

Self-reflection Question: How are you helping your team explore AI as a tool for improvement while ensuring they maintain critical thinking about the outputs AI produces?

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About Prabhleen Kaur

Prabhleen is a Certified Scrum Master with 7+ years of experience helping teams succeed with SAFe, Scrum and Kanban. Passionate about clean backlogs, powerful metrics, and dashboards that actually mean something. She is also known for making JIRA behave, driving Agile transformations, and helping teams ship value consistently and confidently.

You can link with Prabhleen Kaur on LinkedIn.

BONUS: The Agile Organization as a Learning System

Think Like a Farmer, Not a Factory Manager

“Go slow to go fast. If you want to go somewhere, go together as a team. Take a farmer’s mentality.”

Simon contrasts monoculture industrial thinking with the permaculture approach of Joel Salatin. Industrial approaches optimize for short-term efficiency but create fragile systems. Farmer thinking recognizes that healthy ecosystems require patience, diversity, and nurturing conditions for growth. The nervous system that’s constantly stressed never builds much over time—think of the body, trust the body, let the body be a body.

Value Masters, Not Scrum Masters

“We need value masters, not Scrum Masters. Agile is a useful tool for delivering value, but value itself is primary. Everything else is secondary—Agile included.”

Tom makes his most provocative point: if you asked a top manager whether they’d prefer an agile person or value delivery, the answer is obvious. Agile is one tactic among many for delivering value—not even a necessary one. The shift required is from process mastery to value mastery, from Scrum Masters to people who understand and can deliver on critical stakeholder values.

The DOVE Manifesto

“I wrote a paper called DOVE—Deliver Optimum Values Efficiently. It’s the manifesto focusing on delivering value, delivering value, delivering value.” Continue reading BONUS: The Agile Organization as a Learning System

BONUS: Quality 5.0—Quantifying the “Unmeasurable” With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

Clarification Before Quantification

“Quantification is not the main idea. The key idea is clarification—so that the executive team understands each other.”

Tom emphasizes that measurement is a means to an end. The real goal is shared understanding. But quantification is a powerful clarification tactic because it forces precision. When someone says they want a “very fast car,” asking “can we define a scale of measure?” immediately surfaces the vagueness. Miles per hour? Acceleration time? Top speed? Each choice defines what you’re actually optimizing for.

The Scale-Meter-Target Framework

“First, define a scale of measure. Second, define the meter—the device for measuring. Third, set numbers: where are we now, what’s the minimum to survive, and what does success look like?” Continue reading BONUS: Quality 5.0—Quantifying the “Unmeasurable” With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

BONUS: Testing as Measurement—Why Bug-Hunting Misses the Point With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

The Revelation That Almost Caused a Car Crash

“Tom said like 10 sentences in a row, kind of like a geometric proof, that just so blew my mind I almost drove off the road. I realized I had wasted hundreds of hours in boardrooms arguing about errors of which we were aware of perhaps 10%.”

Simon shares the moment Tom’s framework clicked for him. The insight? Traditional testing—finding bugs and defects—is the wrong focus entirely. It’s a programmer’s view of the world. Managers don’t care about bugs; they care about results, about improvements in their business. Tom calls this shift moving from “testing” to “measurement of enhanced or increased value at every cycle.”

The American Toast Problem

“How do we make toast in America? We burn the toast, and then we pay someone to scrape off the black bits off the bread.”

Vasco invokes Deming’s classic analogy to describe traditional software testing. The entire testing-at-the-end approach is fundamentally wasteful. Instead, Tom advocates for continuous measurement against quantified values. If you expected 3% progress toward your goals this week and didn’t get it, you’ve learned something critical: your strategy needs to change. If you did get it, keep going with confidence.

Four Questions at Every Checkpoint

“Where are we going? Where are we now? Where should we have been at this point? And why is there a gap?” Continue reading BONUS: Testing as Measurement—Why Bug-Hunting Misses the Point With Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel

Dave Smith: Democratizing Leadership, Cultivating a Culture of Openness and Improvement in Open Source Agile Teams

“Leadership is not about titles, it’s about action.” Dave’s story on change leadership dismantles the myth of hierarchical leadership, advocating for a culture where anyone can step up. By introducing version control in a volunteer group riddled with anti-patterns, Dave demonstrates how leading by example and involving stakeholders in change processes can foster a positive approach to code quality and project management. Learn how creating psychological safety and inviting feedback can turn the most ardent resisters into advocates for change.

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About Dave Smith

Dave, has over 20 years in training and consulting, having taught Scrum he continues to be active in the agile community, mentoring and helping others who are joining the agile community.

You can link with Dave Smith on LinkedIn.