Scrum is an Agile project management methodology. Basically it centers around iterated short term “sprints” of about two weeks where team members have relative autonomy, and after which there are meetings to consider any emergent issues before committing to the next sprint. It’s supposed to be more flexible and responsive than traditional “waterfall” project management, where an entire project is planned out in advance in a linear progression. Funnily enough it actually was named after the rugby term

It’s very popular in software development in particular, since oftentimes development can be broken into modular tasks that can be worked on in parallel. Many argue that it’s a fad that’s been shoehorned into applications where it isn’t useful, or that some practitioners focus so much on the structure that they bog down the process with endless meetings.

A scrum master is a specialist who helps an organization implement scrum.