An agile software development methodology developed by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland in the mid-1990s. Scrum is based on a "Sprint," which is a 30-day period for delivering a working part of the system. Each Sprint starts with a two to three-hour planning session that includes the customer (product owner), the facilitator (Scrum Master) and the cross-functional team. The customer describes the highest priority in the backlog, and after the team agrees on how much of it to do, it is left alone to do it. To keep the team synchronized, there is a 15-minute meeting every day. At the end of the Sprint, the results are delivered and reviewed, and the next Sprint is started.

Scrum is facilitated by a Scrum Master, whose primary job is to remove impediments to the ability of the team to deliver the sprint goal and ensure that the Scrum process is used as intended. The Scrum Master is the enforcer of rules and sprints of practice. The master protects the scrum team from impediments and distractions. The Scrum Master is not the leader of the team (as they are self-organizing) but acts as a buffer between the team and any distracting influences. Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication across all team members and disciplines that are involved in the project. The Product Owner represents the voice of the customer to ensure the Scrum Team works with the right things from a business perspective.

A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that fundamentally empirical challenges cannot be addressed successfully in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach – accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team's ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.