How Scrum Can Be Applied to Financial Reporting

Alex Brown

October 11, 2012

Scrum isn’t just for improving product development. As Alex Brown, COO of Scrum Inc. explains in this short video, a new area the methodology is being implemented into is financial reporting.

 

Traditional company manages finances starting at the beginning of the fiscal year, creating a budget that supposedly captures everything that’s going to happen throughout the entire year, says Brown. Unfortunately, that results in a lot of management time and resources being focused on rewarding/punishing teams based on what is really just a best-guess. The Scrum approach to finance is fundamentally different, Brown explains. First of all, it recognizes the budget estimate as just that: an estimate. Instead, it calls for management to use only the first quarter as an actual target, and therefore allows and encourages them to incorporate learnings from the previous quarter when making each assessment.

While it may seem very different at first, it’s actually similar to the way Wall Street currently tracks financial performance. For more information, visit www.scruminc.com.

 

Alex BrownAlex Brown is Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Owner at Scrum Inc.




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Partner

<strong>Alex Brown</strong> is a partner at <a href="http://reconstrategy.com/">Recon Strategy</a>. Prior to this role, he was the Chief Operating Officer of Scrum Inc., a firm specializing in agile strategy and rapid new product innovation. Before that Alex spent 6 years at BCG, where he was a leader in the healthcare and consumer strategy practice areas. His engagements included re-envisioning high performance network design for a major national PBM; and designing a "nudge unit" leveraging consumer psychology to improve patient outcomes for a leading retail pharmacy. Prior to BCG, Alex led demand forecasting of complex transportation networks for major public investments. Alex graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. and Masters in Engineering, and earned an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.