The Inovis Blog

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There’s a buzzword floating around that you may have overheard: SCRUM. While we have featured blog posts in the past about the importance of Automation with SCRUM and how user stories are important to the Agile process, we really haven’t published a piece introducing SCRUM. Here’s a quick intro.

Also known as the Agile Process, SCRUM is a software development process that involves members of Quality Assurance, Development, Product Management, and various other employees.

What exactly is the Agile Process? The term ‘SCRUM’ originates from a rugby term for eight individual ruby players that act together rather than individually to get the ball down the field. They move in calculated, incremental steps rather than rushing to the goal.

In the world of software development, SCRUM is an incremental process that is composed of ‘sprints’ or development cycles that last two weeks. At the end of each sprint, a potentially shippable set of functionality is produced. While new features are added on in each cycle, the idea is to have a functional core product at the end of each sprint. SCRUM is not just a process, it’s a mind set. SCRUM builds team work, encourages creativity, and defines those who are pigs and those who are chicks. For more information or to better wrap your head around this subject, check out this Wikipedia article.

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I was talking to a representative of a major retailer this week and they informed me that one of their “green” initiatives is to sell more products through the D2C channel (direct to consumer: shipped to the consumer directly from the manufacturer). They claimed their research showed less of a carbon footprint from them due to less shipping and less inventory. Is that truly a green initiative or just passing the footprint on to suppliers and consumers?

-Randy

Rwanda Basket featured on Macys.com

Patricia Deneen, a member of Inovis’s Education Services, e-mailed this to me while she was at the Inovis Educational Roadshow in Dallas this past week. What a truly inspiring story!

When you think of Africa, do you think of Inovis? I never have. That is, until recently at our Educational Services Roadshow in Dallas when I met an Inovis Catalogue customer, Fair Winds Trading Company, who in conjunction with Macy’s—another Inovis customer—are in partnership for the Rwanda Path to Peace.

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Today’s post is a Q&A with Paul Lavery, Director of Catalogue and Data Synchronization Services at Inovis. Paul is responsible for product strategy and planning, identifying market requirements, and defining specific features for product releases. Paul is a solid source about Data Synchronization and Catalogue for both Inovis employees and customers, and was kind enough to recently answer five questions frequently asked by customers in regards to the new Inovis Catalogue with Images.

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