In my current role, we just completed a lessons learned exercise and the one thing that stood out as being most meaningful from our product owner in our journey was creation of a backlog and migrating to Agile, using Scrum with all ceremonies.
This change gave the business visibility into the work being done, gave the opportunity to easily alter work priorities, and also gave tangible velocity metrics on work being done. In other words, focus on the most valuable work and adapt to change.
I think it is a really exciting journey you are on.
@Tim Comella I agree. I've been interested in scrum for many years, but was under the impression it was just for development teams. It's very interesting to experience it in the world of research and learning.