This is a fascinating video to watch. David Quinn, Senior Marketing Director at EMC, reveals the intimate details of how his organization introduced Agile to the marketing group. I’ve been through this process twice now, and repetition doesn’t make it less interesting.
I think it’s worth watching, but be a critical listener. He has some interesting interpretations of Agile and Scrum… They aren’t wrong, per se. But don’t assume his approach will be “right” for your organization (teams don’t have daily standups/daily Scrums, apparently).
Some background…
The Corporate Marketing Group that his team belonged to was was responsible for the following:
- Brand and Creative
- Web Teams
- SEO
- Mobile Marketing
- Social Media
- EMC-TV
Internally, the culture of the team (and perhaps the company) was built on the premise of, “The more things you do, the better you are.” This, of course, leads inevitably to the task churn and task posturing we’re all familiar with.
In an effort to lead the change, David piloted an “Agile Marketing” program composed of a “made up” methodology, the components of which they cherry-picked from a menu Agile values.
This is usually where I start to smell a pending disaster.
But perhaps not. They have their own unique spin on things for sure, but some of what they’ve learned along the way may be familiar to your organization:
- We need to do fewer things, better. Ten things done really well provides more value than 10 Million things done poorly.
- Everything is not a fire. If you’re going around putting out fires, something is wrong.
- Conversations in meatspace help teams have a shared understanding corporate priorities.
- Everything gets talked about in front of everybody else. Radical transparency and accountability.
- It’s OK to talk about bad news (delays, poor execution, etc…).
- Just barely good enough. Prior to this, they would spend years chasing perfection. They now start with JBGE.
- The job of marketing is to get it done. It’s not to add red tape.
- Work is demonstrated at the end of every sprint.
- Individuals are responsible to the team, not a “manager”.
- This is change. People (and organizations) are resistant to change.
- This is a work in process. They are looking for ways to learn from what they’ve done and improve.
