The insurance industry is in the midst of a complete technological transformation, and fierce market competition is increasingly driving the importance of getting IT initiatives to market as fast as possible. The methodology used—whether for an externally facing digital portal, internal data analytics or full core systems replacement—can have substantial implications on both the speed-to-market as well as the overall success of the initiative.

In recent years, the traditional waterfall methodology has given way to a variety of agile models, with Scrum being the most popular. Unfortunately, while Scrum has led to many positive outcomes that have garnered a lot of press, there are an equal number of failures where Scrum has been labeled as the culprit.