How do you manage software quality in Scrum? In traditional waterfall projects, teams will try to detect bugs in the final software testing activities like integration and acceptance tests. With the short timeframe of Scrum sprints, this approach does not work for Agile projects. In his book Scrum Product Ownership, Robert Galen provides some guidance on how to build quality software with one fundamental tip: you don’t test quality!



I spend a great deal of time coaching various teams in their agile adoption journeys and make this point in every introductory class. But, inevitably after we’re done sprinting, I hear team members, cross-functional stakeholders, and executives talking about testing and quality as if they were synonymous.

Read my lips. You don’t test quality. By the time you get to testing, it’s too late. Your quality has already been instantiated into your code. Instead you build quality into your DNA and work habits by individually adopting some of these values: