Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

by Jeff Sutherland

Then in 2007 General David Petraeus led what became known as the “Surge,” which involved putting tens of thousands more troops into the country and having them live among the populace. This new strategy had a remarkable impact. One reason was that it got the Iraqi people to believe that the Americans were on their side, fighting the insurgents who were blowing up bombs in their neighborhoods and conducting ethnic cleansing. Another reason was that the American military, using a program called the “Sons of Iraq,” succeeded in bribing tens of thousands of former insurgents to come over to the US side. But there was a third component of the strategy—something that journalist Bob Woodward called as revolutionary as the invention of the tank or the airplane. This weapon wasn’t a new gizmo or unmanned drone. It was what General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command at the time, called “collaborative warfare.” It involved using cross-functional teams from across the entire US government to target and disrupt Al Qaeda networks.