Monday, August 27, 2012

Design Thinking & Agile Marketing



Photo: Courtesy of the Stanford D.School
Last Friday, I had the opportunity to take a tour of Stanford’s renowned D.School. The similarities between the design thinking process and the Agile Marketing framework were obvious:   a righteous intention towards the customer, collaboration, iteration, testing and measurement.  I could not help but be inspired, and the experience has allowed me to reflect upon my Agile Marketing journey at Cisco. 

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.