Can Marketing go Agile?2012 Agile Conference

Speaker: 陳重瑜

INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND ONE ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND TWO CONCLUSION

OUTLINE

INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND ONE ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND TWO CONCLUSION

OUTLINE

Some few brave souls have attempted to use Agile methods in business, sales, marketing teams.

The Perforce use Agile methods in marketing team, here will describe our journey so far, the problems we overcame, and the road ahead.

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND ONE ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND TWO CONCLUSION

OUTLINE

Perforce engineering and Agile Perforce marketing department structure

and functions

BACKGROUND

Perforce develops version management software

250 employees, 5 offices, Three continents Perforce’s engineering teams adopted Agile

starting in 2008

Perforce engineering and Agile

MarComs: product release promotion participating in trade shows and events producing outbound collateral engaging in social media channels

Product management and technical marketing: Product management: product business analysis and

planning technical marketing: on technical trends and

competitive research

Perforce marketing department structure and functions

INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND ONE ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND TWO CONCLUSION

OUTLINE

Lack of communication Lack of management visibility Schedule chaos

Problems seen

Lack of communication and transparency hampered marketing.

Marketing did not understand the engineering priorities, roadmap, or product direction

communication problems were even more severe between the US and UK offices

Lack of communication

Marketing managers did not always understand what their teams were working on day-to-day.

No clear record of task priority, daily task assignments were often inferred, or communicated verbally or over email.

Lack of management visibility

A change in engineering schedule, while often unavoidable, has a large downstream impact on marketing

Marketing is bound by another department’s schedule, making it difficult to plan effectively.

Schedule chaos

That problem actually grew worse after engineering adopted Agile.

Marketing activities simply have a long lead time and are difficult to adjust at the last minute

Schedule chaos

The problems encountered by the marketing teams are those often solved by Agile

In early 2011 the decision was made to adopt Agile in marketing, using the Scrum framework

Scrum!

Basic visibility improved (intra-department) The white board is a mess Little visibility inter-department Little coordination with remote teams

How did we do?

Simply having 30 minutes each day for the managers to hear what everyone was working on

those meetings were taking too long. With as many as 8 people in the room and on the phone, finishing in a half hour was difficult

Basic visibility improved (intra-department)

The task board was not a resounding success those first months.

No value for the remote workers or the team in the UK.

The white board is a mess

Engineering manager would not have gotten a good sense of marketing’s tasks and priorities from looking at the task board

there was no cross-department participation in the Scrum activities, so no information was shared between departments.

Little visibility inter-department

It was very difficult for those of us working remotely to participate

Several of us travel frequently and often missed the standup meetings

Little coordination with remote teams

INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND ONE ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND TWO CONCLUSION

OUTLINE

Round One was a mixed bag In true Agile fashion, we adapted and made

some changes This section covers our experiences in the

second half of 2011 and the first part of 2012.

ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND TWO

Put more emphasis on using collaboration tools

Using Basecamp for some project planning and collaboration

Teams in Alameda continue to use the physical task board to facilitate the daily standup meeting

ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND TWO

After some experience, we got better at task estimation how much could reasonably fit into a month what types of tasks were likely to be impacted

by external factors what activities had to be decomposed into

smaller tasks

Better estimation

INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND ONE ADOPTING AGILE: ROUND TWO CONCLUSION

OUTLINE

Marketing has settled into something of a rhythm with Agile.

Adopting Agile have actually exposed underlying problems in business processes and organization.

CONCLUSION

Adopting Agile in marketing brought some immediate benefits

The problems that were exposed were lingering

A long road ahead of us We need tools

CONCLUSION

THANKS FOR LISTENING