September 10, 2009 – Charlotte, NC – Mariner, an industry-leading business intelligence and performance management solutions provider, is proud to announce that Joseph Mercier, Project Manager and Certified ScrumMaster, has provided an article series to LocalTechWire, the online technology journal of the Southeast, that began running today, Thursday, September 10th, 2009, with Part Two scheduled for Monday, September 14 and Part Three later in the week.. The article series provides insight into the principals of Scrum and how Scrum fits into the Agile methodology of software development. Joseph also reveals the benefits that companies realize from the role a ScrumMaster plays in establishing Scrum and Agile as the project management foundation for their software development projects.

You may read the first in Mr. Mercier’s series, entitled “ScrumMaster: Blending Open Project Management (Scrum) and Agile Development” and look for the series completion next week on LocalTechWire’s site.

Scrum, one of the oldest and most widely applied agile project management practices, uses agile and iterative methodologies and a lean approach to software development. Scrum concentrates on delivering the highest business value features first, avoiding the development of features that will never be used. Scrum helps ensure a greater success level for projects than with other non-iterative and less adaptive project management methods.

About Joseph Mercier

Mr. Joseph Mercier has more than 30 years of experience in project management of software development projects. And provides project management and technology consulting services to clients as well as strategic planning, enterprise problem solving and facilitation support. He is currently engaged in developing and delivering data warehouse and business intelligence solutions for education clients. Joseph has Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a Masters certificate in Project Management from George Washington University, and holds certifications as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM). Mr. Mercier is a member of the Agile Alliance and Project Management Institute (PMI). He is actively involved in several national PMI Special Interest Groups and in the Metrolina PMI Chapter.