Your Team's New Rubber Duck

There’s an old trick programmers use called rubber duck debugging. You keep a rubber duck on your desk. When you’re stuck, you explain your code to the duck. Out loud. Somewhere in the middle of saying, “And then it does this because…” you hear it. Oh. That’s where it breaks.

Explaining forces clarity. And this doesn’t just work for code.

It works for anything needing clarity:

• What does “done” actually mean for this story?

• How should we break this feature down?

• What problem are we really trying to solve?

We’ve all attended those meetings where the conversation goes in circles. Everyone’s talking. Nothing is landing. Now imagine having a rubber duck for those moments.

That’s one of the most useful ways to think about AI. Not as an expert handing you answers. Not as a replacement for human judgment. But as a patient listener, that forces you to articulate what you actually mean.

Picture a team in backlog refinement, stuck on acceptance criteria. Instead of another round of “well, it depends,” someone opens an AI chat and starts typing:

“We’re building a feature that lets users…”

Just explaining it to something outside the team, something that doesn’t share context and won’t fill in the blanks, changes the dynamic. The AI reflects back:

“So if I understand correctly, the user needs to…”

And the team immediately reacts:

“No. Not quite. That’s not it. What we mean is…”

That’s the moment of value. Not the AI’s response.The clarity the team gains from trying to explain themselves.

The same thing works in retrospectives. Struggling to name what’s really going wrong? Try finishing this sentence for an audience that won’t rescue you:

“We keep missing sprint commitments because…”

Watch what surfaces when you’re forced to be precise.

It works for story splitting too:

“This story feels big because…”

The duck sits there while you realize you’re describing three stories, not one.

The best thinking partners don’t always give advice. Sometimes they create enough space for you to hear your own thinking. AI won’t replace the human conversations that make agile work. But it can help teams get unstuck.

Every team deserves a rubber duck. Yours just happens to type back.

A simple prompt to get started:

Act as my rubber duck. I’m going to explain a problem or idea.

Your job is to listen, reflect back what you understand, and ask clarifying questions.

Don’t offer solutions unless I ask for them.

If I’m vague, push me to be more specific.

Your goal is to help me hear my own thinking more clearly.

I’ll start by explaining…