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| Photo: Courtesy of the Stanford D.School |
In early 2012, Cisco’s
Global Corporate Marketing & Branding (GCMB) Team kicked-off our Agile
Marketing initiative. My role was to
lead the implementation for our team and to proliferate Agile Marketing across the
other marketing functions at Cisco. We started by launching two pilot programs. I am happy to share the details of the two
pilots at a later time. For now, I’d
like to focus on three areas one might consider when implementing Agile
Marketing in their organization. These
are not necessarily the three areas I think are most important, rather, areas
that could have improved our implementation.
1. Build Innovators, not
innovation. It quickly became clear
to me that this was a fundamental principle of the D.School. Perhaps one of
the largest obstacles to implementing Agile Marketing is changing the culture
of a team or organization. For many
companies, this may seem like a lofty challenge. At a large, mature company like
Cisco, it felt (and still feels) particularly insurmountable. What I realized from this principle is that
the change first starts with me…one person.
When it came to the Agile Marketing pilots, I was talking the language
and going through the motions. Outside
of the pilot projects it was business as usual.
I am not suggesting that I needed to implement Agile Marketing for
everything else, but I missed an opportunity to model the aspects of Agile
Marketing that can help to set it in motion.
The easiest example is what the D.School calls “saturation and grouping”. Basically, using Post-It Notes as a way to
collect thoughts and organize. People don’t
need to understand Agile Marketing to grasp this approach, but chances are they
will ask what and why. This is the
starting point for building the next “innovator”.
2. Physical space
fosters collaboration. Creativity
oozes out of every corner of the D.School.
A key element to allow for such creativity is how the
work space is designed. All the walls
are dry-erase boards, the furniture is comfy and mobile…..you get the idea. For many of us, this is not the reality of
our work environment. However, if you
have the ability to create a make-shift war room, do it. As it happens, for one
of my pilots, we had dedicated space where we could put the physical task board
on the wall and gather to conduct stand-ups.
For the other pilot, we did not have this luxury. Other wise, we did not give much consideration to the physical space where we were going to conduct our Agile Marketing activities. Which team worked more effectively? It was no comparison. Collaboration was much
higher for the team with their own space.
The first natural question is how to deal with mobile and global teams? If you have a computer with a camera you can
make it work. I saw it happening live at
the D.School, you just need to be…creative.
Bottom line, when you’re implementing Agile Marketing, don't forget to consider
the physical space where your ceremonies will take place.
3. Education is ongoing.
We had the privilege of having a breakout session with Dr. Nancy Roberts, whose
research interest includes, among other things, Wicked Problems. I had the chance to share a bit with her about
our Agile Marketing journey and some of the challenges I was experiencing at
Cisco. I explained that even after ten consecutive
sprints, it still feels like extracurricular work for one of my pilot
teams. She helped me realize that one
mistake we made was leaving the team to their own devices too soon. Prior to launching the pilots, we conducted a
two-day workshop on our Agile Marketing framework. For the first three sprints, facilitators
were present in each of the ceremonies to help “Sherpa” the team. After sprint three, they were basically on
their own. I would attend the demo and
retrospective, and we would discuss the changes we could implement; however,
the team has not progressed much since.
My recommendation would be to continue the Sherpa model, but evolve it
over time. Integrate tasks into each
sprint that focuses on advancing specific elements of Agile Marketing (for example,
setting better acceptance criteria or improving sizing and estimation). Rotate scrum-masters to avoid falling onto
old habits. The lesson here is to make
Agile Marketing education a priority for at least the first three to six months
of implementation. After that point, the scrum master can play a vital role to
keep the team on the correct Agile Marketing path.
