Technology, data and information intelligence have become the foundation for achieving many business goals, especially those goals addressing efficiency and effectiveness where timely and accurate communication and data are paramount for monitoring risks and planning the future of our services.

In order to achieve these goals, an agile and flexible methodology can be leveraged to maintain continual inspection, adaptation, self-organization, and emergence of innovation.


About Our Group


Systems & Metrics group maintains both operational and project oriented roles in our day to day business. In order to meet the challenges of our next generation intelligence approach, a methodology was needed that could complement development management and maintain control while staying iterative, innovative and agile. Scrum was adopted.


What is Scrum?


Scrum is arguably one of the oldest and most widely applied agile development methods, with an emphasis on iterative and adaptive project management practices. It encourages rapid and flexible response to change and promotes cross-functional team interactions throughout the development cycle. The key with Scrum is that it works well for any complex, innovative scope of work (i.e. not just for the software guys)


Scrum in 30 seconds (this is our adaptation)


  • The product owner creates a prioritized requirements list called a product backlog (can include wish list items)
  • A sprint planning meeting is held, and the team pulls a small chunk from the top of the product backlog, called a sprint backlog
  • The sprint backlog is analyzed and broken into tasks
  • The team has a certain amount of time, a sprint, to complete its work - this is typically anywhere from one to four weeks

    • There can be several Sprints...more on that in a few seconds


  • The team meets each day to assess its progress (daily scrum)
  • At the end of the sprint, the work should be potentially "consumer ready", as in something is ready for production use.
  • The sprint ends with a sprint review and retrospective (i.e. lessons learned)
  • As the next sprint begins, the team chooses another chunk of the product backlog and begins working again.
  • This cycle continues until either all items are completed, deadline arrives, or no further development is possible

That's a funny name...Scrum


The scrum process was coined in 1993 by Jeff Sutherland, who borrowed the term "scrum" from an analogy put forth in a 1986 study by Takeuchi and Nonaka, published in the Harvard Business Review. In that study, Takeuchi and Nonaka compare high-performing, cross-functional teams to the scrum formation used by Rugby teams.