By the man who helped invent the red-hot management process known as "Scrum", Scrum unveils what is wrong with the way we currently do work, and how a simple set of principles, applied in exactly the right sequence, can accelerate productivity and quality as much as 1,200 percent.

Scrum (which gets its name from the formation in rugby in which the whole team locks its arms to gain control of the ball) is the reason that Amazon can launch a new feature on its website every day. It's why the Red River Army Depot in Texas was able to roll out armored Humvees 39 times faster than before. It's how the FBI finally created a massive terrorist-tracking database.

The reason for the rapid embrace of Scrum across so many disciplines is simple: organizations that implement Scrum typically double productivity and quality - and sometimes the increase can be as much as 12-fold. But the promise of Scrum as a project management tool extends far beyond business. Much as Atul Gawande did in The Checklist Manifesto, Sutherland shows how this unique approach to problem solving and team optimization has nearly universal application.

At bottom, Scrum is about coming