As a marketer and communicator, I’ve found myself over the years trying to balance the organizational needs of planning against the realities of responding to change quickly (social media, anyone?), only to realize that I seemingly could not find a way to do both well. Until Agile. To help others, I’ve shared how I have applied Agile to marketing and communications.
It’s hard to juggle planned work against the pressures of unplanned work due to change.
Over the years, I’ve worked with and around software developers and have come to first appreciate and then come to study and use their secret to delivering code quickly and adapting just as fast to new features and bug fixes. They’ve made the development shift to Agile, and I saw the huge benefits of faster shippable products with fewer defects and greater adoption and wondered how I could apply their success to marketing and communications.
Project Planning and The New Agile
A very brief recap of the way things used to be versus how they are now in project planning:
- Agile is a belief that a collaborative team working in short durations together can deliver more often and change more rapidly to meet market demands.
- Scrum is a framework for applying Agile that plans all work in chunks and follows ‘ceremonies’ that organize work.
- Kanban is an Agile approach that visualizes work (a board with notes or cards), limits the work in progress (no multitasking allowed!), and focuses on workflow.
- Both Scrum and Kanban provide continuous improvement through measurement, discussion, and learning.
Marketing is always in a responsive mode given the nature of the work, so planning every detail out with rigid inflexibility is lunacy.
So do I use Scrum or Kanban? Actually, both. I typically use Scrumban, which is a hybrid model that, in my opinion, takes the best Agile ceremonies of Scrum and the visualization and pull-based flow of Kanban. I think it’s ideal for marketing and communication teams that must plan some level of their work (Editorial Calendars) but be able to pivot as urgent, unplanned work or changes due to external pressures happen, such as social media timeliness, a change in publication dates, or a shift in deliverables.
The New Normal of Marketing & Comms
Allow me to illustrate how I have lead teams in using Scrumban.
Example of a board used in ‘Scrumban’ — which shared roots in both Scrum and Kanban. This is a simplified mock-up for illustrative purposes only.
The blending of Scrum and Kanban into Scrumban means that MarComm teams have the capacity to use a both/and mentality for meeting deliverables on the Editorial Calendar whilst also making room for the reality of interruptions due to time-sensitive needs.
To organize and prioritize potential work for these two weeks, marketers first look at their Editorial Calendar to see what’s due next, and when they have to be ready to publish. Once all due dates and work related to these timelines are organized, they look at what else needs to be done that doesn’t necessarily have a hard deadline.
The purpose is to prioritize work that will realize the most value for the organization.
Teams have a daily 15-minute (yep, fast — no long, wasted meetings!) stand-ups, a group exercise where only three questions are asked of each person:
- What did you work on?
- What will you be working now?
- Is there anything/anyone in your way?
The daily stand up identifies what we’ve done, what we’re working on and what’s in our way or waiting on approval as a team. This is key, as the high level of accountability ensures the team succeeds together.
Why I Chose Agile (and Scrumban as my framework)
Perhaps the biggest reason I use Scrumban instead of Scrum is because of the nature of change associated with content marketing automation and iterative content development. Content marketing requires we move fast, pivot quickly, and get measurable results. Agile helps with every aspect of that.
Accountability? High. Communication? Required. Any marketer or communications professional worth their salt knows the speed of change is increasing, daily. This is reason enough to break away from what isn’t working, but Agile will only work when it’s bought into by leadership (who wants higher productivity anyway) and a team(s) dedicated to working collaboratively instead of in silos.
For those interested in learning more, I highly recommend following my friend Andrea Fryrear from Agile Sherpas, who has written a plethora of great content on Agile marketing. Plus, the Marketing Agility Podcast is led by two super sharp guys (Frank Days and Roland Smart), as they’re sharing case studies and interviewing Agile marketing leaders worldwide.